Rand Paul’s ideas about the Fed make absolutely no sense

Matt O'Brien in Wonkblog explains why Rand Paul’s ideas about the Fed make absolutely no sense "The problem is Paul knows just enough terminology to play an expert on TV, without actually knowing a thing." He goes into some details explaining why we already "audit the Fed" enough and why saying the "Fed is leveraged" is nonsensical.

Rand Paul seems to understand approximately none of this. He and others in the the GOP have, for years, brayed about high inflation that didn't exist and currency depreciation that wasn't happening, even taking the unprecedented step of publicly warning the Fed off its stimulus efforts, all while the real problems were too-low inflation, and, more recently, a stronger dollar that's put a crimp on the recovery. But despite this, Paul wants these people who have been, to put it charitably, wrong about everything to have more of a say against the ones who haven't. And it's all in the name of "transparency" that the Fed is already providing plenty of, which Paul would know if he actually read something about it anywhere other than the usual Austrian suspects. The worst part, though, is that we know what an economy with the kind of tight money that Republicans prefer looks like right now. It's called "Europe," and it has twice as much unemployment as we do. But hey, empirical evidence doesn't matter, right? Let them eat first principles!