Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an absurd piece by one Daniel Arbess, arguing in favor of a policy of greatly increased money creation by the Fed. Today’s edition has several response letters to this “something for nothing” nonsense. Here’s my favorite:

Why not just have Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke print $17 trillion and pay off the national debt at the same time. After all, we know Congress and the executive branch will, from that point forward, only do the right thing.

Mr. Arbess also advocates having “smart, job-providing government investments,” an oxymoron if ever there was one. This certainly rounds out the free-lunch theory he proposes. The $800 billion stimulus package that was promoted as doing just that is Exhibit A for how well this theory works.

Mr. Arbess says that quantitative easing hasn’t been much of a success, and we know the stimulus failed, so he now wants to double down on monetary and fiscal failures. Real financiers call for free and open markets, not government-led markets.

Larry Stewart

Vienna, Va.