A.G. Gancarski
Seven days a week, Florida House resources are used to push the House Speaker’s COVID-19 update forward.
Saturday’s edition brought forth a number of interesting links and textual excerpts that some readers may say reflects Jose Oliva‘s thinking on the issue.
“Dear crisis experts, you are the crisis,” reads the title of the lead article from Real Clear Markets in the Hialeah Republican’s media review.
Strong takes abound reinforcing a recurrent Oliva trope that when it came to coronacrackdowns, the cure was worse than the disease.
“Some have said that expert-informed political responses to the new coronavirus have resulted in cures worse than the disease, which is really a blinding glimpse of the obvious. Anytime the possible brilliance of the few is substituted for the decentralized knowledge of the marketplace, odds are high that something resembling ‘crisis’ will reveal itself,” went the argument.
The Speaker offered a double-shot from Real Clear Markets, with the second article bemoaning a “backdoor bailout” of state governments via coronavirus relief funds.
Florida, like every state, expects federal money to spackle holes in the drywall that is the current year’s and next year’s budgets.
However, this “fiat currency” is not free money.
“It is impossible for the Federal Reserve to maintain its monetary policy independence while pursing these politically motivated bailouts. This is an off-budget trick which allows elected officials to skirt responsibility as voters are confused by the smoke and mirrors.”
With the Florida Legislature expected to have to convene sometime this year to allocate federal money, it will be interesting to see if the Governor and Senate President share the Speaker’s philosophical opposition to manufactured currency during crisis.
Oliva, more so than any other Florida Republican in a leadership position, has railed against unintended consequences of the economic restrictions that have crashed the global economy since March.
Previous iterations of his daily email saw the Speaker link to and embed text from articles calling coronavirus shutdowns economic suicide, pointless and criminal.
The Speaker’s position has been clear throughout this crisis, suffused with worry about the impacts of shutdowns and the fear driving them.
“At what point is the cure worse than the virus,” he asked in March. “We are all deeply concerned but should we all be deathly afraid?”
