WASHINGTON & WALL STREET: IS THE FEDERAL RESERVE RESPONSIBLE FOR FISCAL GRIDLOCK?

There is a lot of commentary in the press about who is responsible for the government shutdown and the near-miss with respect to extending the debt ceiling. The leading culprit is the Tea Party movement, a bunch of right-thinking Americans who are foolish enough to believe in the libertarian principles upon which our nation was founded. But blaming the Tea Party for the fiscal gridlock in Washington is dead wrong.

Next comes Texas Republican Ted Cruz, who conducted a one-man demonstration on the floor of the US Senate against fiscal dysfunction in Washington -- this in an effort to derail the Obamacare law. For his efforts, Cruz earned the derision of conservative Washington insiders for daring to threaten the Fed’s artificial life support program with a real live financial crisis. He also earned the disdain of most establishment Republicans in the process.

“Ted Cruz and the people around him said that anyone who didn't follow his direction on this was a Nazi appeaser… if you didn't take his tactic, you owned Obamacare," Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" onNewsmax TV. "No one's questioning his conservative credentials. It's his wisdom and his judgment and the name-calling that he has thrown at every Republican in the House and the Senate," Norquist told Newsmax.

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