Ron Paul, Jim Cramer, and the Fed

A reader crystallizes the response I had to this clip:

This was some of weirdest, most-contradictory television I have seen. Cramer was screaming earlier this fall because he wants the Fed to lower rates in order to pump up the market, so his friends don't get hurt. Yet here he is complaining that they created the housing bubble? Well, yes, they enabled it at least, how? Well, with low interest rates. So Cramer, who wants a huge increase in the money supply, is agreeing with Paul, whose complaint is that the Fed has enabled inflation and who wants to get rid of monetary policy by going to the Gold Standard. Doesn't make sense to me.

On another note, one of the problems with the Gold Standard (besides preventing a country from smoothing  out the business cycle) is that it is basically deflationary. I am not a "Fed worshipper," I think the Fed did enable the housing bubble, but these guys are really a little single-minded. So, single-minded that they don't seem to realize that they believe opposite things--it makes one wonder whether they really do understand Monetary Policy as much as they think they do.

I guess my preference is this side of Ron Paul's: a Fed that cares solely about sound money. Which is not how it's been behaving. Tyler Cowen comments here.