Bob Wenzel notes that Keynesian Joe Weisenthal just tweeted: “Ugh. Paul Ryan appears to believe in something akin to the gold standard. http://bit.ly/NpNMK4.”
Be sure to read Bob’s analysis, which is spot on as always. But for me, the key point is this: how tone-deaf to the U.S. political spectrum would someone have to be to think the VP candidate of any major party would ever be a supporter of anything like the classical gold standard?
When I see something like “Paul Ryan supports something like the gold standard,” I know instantly that the statement is false. To account for Weisenthal, on the other hand, we have three possibilities: (1) he really is so clueless about American politics that he thinks a return to the gold standard is even on the table; (2) he is so clueless about what a gold standard consists of that he thinks Ryan’s feckless statements indicate support for it; or (3) he wants to demonize even the mildest criticism about the present monetary system by associating it with the hated gold standard, a system regarding which most Americans (and especially economic journalists) are entirely ignorant.
But again, read the Wenzel analysis for what Ryan actually thinks.