Monday update: Benko slams Pearlstein; Laffer on enterprise zones; Tamny pans the President's jobs plan.

From Forbes, Ralph Benko slams The Washington Post’s Keynesian columnist Steven Pearlstein for disrespecting the gold standard.

In The WSJ, Art Laffer resuscitates enterprise zones to help African-American communities hit by high unemployment.
From Cato, Alan Reynolds corrects Charles Krauthammer on the Eisenhower economy.

Whether President Obama's base finds supply-side economics appealing or not, he should immediately join with all members of Congress from both parties to develop a full program for enterprise zones. And while enterprise zones are desperately needed in our inner cities, there are lots of areas in the hollows of Kentucky and West Virginia that need enterprise zones as well, not to mention barrios in California and New Mexico. Enterprise zones should be areas that are geographically defined with exceptionally high concentrations of poverty, underachievement and unemployment.

At Forbes, John Tamny pans the President’s jobs plan.

On Kudlow, Stephen Moore debates the President’s job plan:

 

The NY Sun connects US Rep. Ron Paul’s (TX) continued strength with many primary voters to his focus on the Constitution, including sound money.

On Asia Times, David Goldman suggests gold is falling because Greece and Italy may go bankrupt.

From TGSN, Ralph Benko features a cable on Beijing taking seriously a return to a dollar gold standard.

On Forbes, Reuven Brenner notes the US has yet to fully recover from 9/11.

At New World Economics, Nathan Lewis recounts the history of the British pound.

From Future of Capitalism, Ira Stoll notes Thomas Friedman’s new book includes positive words about the gold standard.

On The Kudlow Report, Cato’s Chris Edwards debates whether Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme:

 

The WSJ chides both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney on Social Security.

On his blog, Dick Morris critiques Perry’s Social Security position.

At International Liberty, Dan Mitchell suggests Romney and Michelle Bachmann are wrong to bash Perry on Social Security.

On COAL, Paul Krugman continues to deny gold’s inflation signal.

Thursday items: Reynolds on tax rates; Woodhill on Keynesian claims; Tamny on Zandi.

In a must-read from The WSJ, Alan Reynolds demolishes tax increase arguments.

At Forbes, Louis Woodhill responds to Keynesian claims.

On The Kudlow Report, Dan Mitchell debates high tax rates:



At RCM, John Tamny challenges Mark Zandi’s weak dollar/tax rebate strategy for growth.

On Money News, Steve Forbes promotes the gold standard.

The WSJ Asia suggests that China raise the yuan’s exchange rate.

There are hints that a debate is ongoing in Beijing about how to alter course before these distortions grow bigger. The reformers have been hamstrung by the export lobby's desire to keep the yuan's value low. But the costs of intervening to do so are rising. Sustaining China's growth will require banks to make market-oriented lending decisions, which won't happen as long as its central bank can't use interest rates as a tool of financial management. The sooner Beijing decides to stop sterilizing, the easier will be the transition to a better financial system.

Freedomist continues to critique NRO’s Kevin Williamson (more here).

At Bloomberg, progressive Ezra Klein calls Tim Pawlenty’s growth strategy fantasyland but acknowledges it is smart politics.

From earlier this week in The WSJ, Bill McGurn rebuts The NYT’s Thomas Friedman for Friedman’s view that the world is full. Like Friedman, McGurn overlooks the unstable and declining dollar:

All around us we see its manifestation in the revival of floppy hats, platform shoes and maxi dresses. We can, however, also detect this same retro fashion sense on the op-ed page of the New York Times. There last week Tom Friedman's column carried one of the sentiments most in vogue in the 1970s: "The Earth Is Full."

Mr. Friedman invokes the usual grim specters so beloved of a certain kind of intellectual: natural disasters (tornadoes, floods and droughts); rising prices (food and energy); the threat to stability; and of course the kicker—that there are just too many darn people around these days.

It's a familiar meme, and it comes bearing the familiar scientific credentials. In this case the authority is, Mr. Friedman tells us, "an alliance of scientists" called the Global Footprint Network, "which calculates how many 'planet Earths' we need to sustain our growth rates." Right now they say it is 1.5. Which can mean only one thing unless we cut way, way back: We're doomed.

At Forbes, Jerry Bowyer continues to examine the psyche of John Maynard Keynes.

On TNR, Jonathan Chait challenges The WSJ’s critique of the President's economic policy.

From this week’s Republican candidate debate, Newt Gingrich had a terrific answer on tax rates:

KING: Mr. Speaker, if you look at a poll in the Boston Globe just the other day, 54 percent of Republican voters in this state say they're willing to have higher taxes on the wealthy to help bring down the deficit. Are they wrong?

GINGRICH: Well, the question is, would it, in fact, increase jobs or kill jobs? The Reagan recovery, which I participated in passing, in seven years created for this current economy the equivalent of 25 million new jobs, raised federal revenue by $800 billion a year in terms of the current economy, and clearly it worked. It's a historic fact.

The Obama administration is an anti-jobs, anti-business, anti- American energy destructive force. And we shouldn't talk about what we do in 2013. The Congress this year, this next week ought to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, they ought to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, they ought to start creating jobs right now, because for those 14 million Americans, this is a depression now.

The Club for Growth lists its key priorities but doesn’t mention the dollar.

Oil confusion.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said America's addiction to oil played a role in reducing the dollar's value.

This is a troubling error from the country's most important foreign policy analyst and extends the life of a canard that has distorted American policy for more than three decades.

In 1971, President Nixon, desiring to spur economic growth, closed the London gold window so he could increase the money supply.

This decision, along with an earlier decision to raise taxes, reflected the era's ascendant economic policy framework -- loose money and high taxes -- as proposed by Keynesians James Tobin and Paul Samuelson. The supply-side policy mix formulated by Robert Mundell -- sound money and lower tax rates -- was a direct repudiation of Tobin/Samuelson, which explains the Keynesian establishment's hostility towards it ever since.

Any how, with the dollar delinked from gold, the greenback fell, losing half its value against gold within a year and half again the next year. By 1973, the gold price had increased from $35 to $140.

Realizing they were being paid in dollars worth a quarter of their prior value, the oil producing nations quadrupled the price per barrel from $2.50 to $10, shocking the American economy and angering the public.

Rather than own up to its weak-dollar error, the establishment blamed OPEC for raising prices. As the dollar's decline became evident in the rising general price level, cause and effect were reversed; the argument emerged that higher oil prices had trickled through the economy, causing inflation.

This theory stuck. To this day, American policy is built on the premise that the oil producing nations can arbitrarily raise the oil price, thereby increasing the inflation rate.

See here, here and here for more.