While many republicans do agree with the majority of the Tea Party ideals, ie smaller government, lower taxes, the ones that have even the slightest clue about world financial markets do not hate the Fed. In fact, they understand its crucial role in the world economy. To go even further, those with economics and finance degrees understood the importance of bailing out the banks during the crisis.

The other problem with the editorial is the mention of inflation. Where is it? It doesn’t exist. Energy and fuel prices may have ticked up a bit but you should know that they are volatile components of the pricing indexes. Inflation isn’t a real concern until the slack, unemployment and excess industrial capacity, are taken out of the system. We know that is a long way off.

Here in the True North the Bank of Canada’s sole responsibility is to ensure core inflation remains in a band between 1% and 3%, averaging 2% over time. The Bank has zero responsibility for job-creation or, more accurately, setting up the conditions conducive to job creation and economic growth. That’s the purview of politicians. And that means they can’t pass the buck, as Mr. Obama has done.

It’s not a perfect system, but over the past nearly twenty years that the Bank has had this tightly focused mandate, Canada has managed to emerge from being a debt-ridden, near third-world country to one that has, to a degree, managed to ride out this economic crisis quite well. Clearly there was some luck involved, but Canada’s inflation-targeting central bank coupled with just one agency regulating the country’s financial institutions may provide some lessons for America.