Fed hopes pretend money will stimulate economy
Re: “Bernanke defends Fed’s new plan to aid economy; rejects worries it will spur inflation,” Nov. 7
President Barack Obama dresses up Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as a magician who will wave his magic wand over the nation’s central bank’s computers and conjure up billions of dollars. This magic act is called quantitative easing.
The trick is having the Fed electronically print money — with nothing to back it — and flush it into the economy. The central bank purchases Treasury bonds from other banks and pays for these bonds with its pretend money. The desired outcome is that this pretend money will be loaned out to small businesses and thus create jobs and ultimately stimulate our economy out of its Great Recession.
But quantitative easing only entices speculators to buy up cheap bonds. This will cause the stock market to emit a shimmer of recovery intended to bedazzle impoverished Americans. But this burst will only illuminate our scorched economic landscape and its desperate inhabitants.
Helen Logan Tackett
Religious have right to practice faith in public square
Re: “Don’t impose religious beliefs on everybody,” From Readers, Nov. 8
Valerie Silensky has it all wrong by supposing that we must either ban all religious expression from the public square or forcibly impose it upon everybody.
According to the actual wording of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law …”) governing the religious activities in question, it is, in fact, perfectly constitutional to conduct them on a voluntary basis on public taxpayer-supported property. We need not ban religious exercise and activity from public venues altogether in order to protect the sensitivities of the unbelieving. All they need to do is decline to attend the event.
The First Amendment also provides for freedom of assembly. The right to assemble is also the right not to assemble if one so chooses.
Lawrence K. Marsh
Metro neglected to do proper escalator maintenance
Re: “Broken Metro escalators send riders flying,” Nov. 4
The escalators in our Metro system have not been maintained properly for a long time. It is scary to use them because their malfunctions have caused injuries.
I am of the opinion that the crew that takes care of the escalators is not properly trained to set the system right. They do breakdown maintenance rather than a planned and systematic approach.
Some of the escalators make noise, calling out for attention, and no one seems to attend to them in time. I have traveled to a number of countries, including developing nations, and found more reliable escalators. It is high time that Metro authorities take care of this problem.
Daniel Chellaraj
CORRECTION: An editing error in Hugh Hewitt’s Nov. 8 column transposed the names of California Republicans Carly Fiorina, who lost her bid to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Meg Whitman, who lost the gubernatorial race to Attorney General Jerry Brown.
