
The tiff began after economics reporter Sudeep Reddy criticized Palin's keynote speech at the Specialty Tools & Fasteners Distributors Association (STAFDA) trade show in Phoenix on Monday in a post on the Wall Street Journal's 'Real Time Economics' blog.
In her remarks, Palin blasted the Federal Reserve's decision to buy $600 billion in long-term U.S. Treasury bonds over the next eight months – a policy known as quantitative easing – in order to help jumpstart economic recovery. The move, Palin said, "deeply concern[s] her."
"Everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it's not just groceries," Palin said in her remarks.
"Maybe it's time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don't want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings," Palin continued.
But in a post entitled, "Sarah Palin's QE2 Criticism Includes Inflation Hyperbole," Reddy took issue with Palin's analysis, saying, "Grocery prices haven't risen all that significantly, in fact. The consumer price index's measure of food and beverages for the first nine months of this year showed average annual inflation of less than 0.6%, the slowest pace on record (since the Labor Department started keeping this measure in 1968)."
Reddy's criticism prompted a harsh rebuttal from Palin in a Facebook post "Do Wall Street Journal Reporters Read the Wall Street Journal?
"Really?" Palin said in response to Reddy's dismissal of higher grocery prices. "That's odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy's own Wall Street Journal titled "Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies."
"The article noted that 'an inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America's supermarkets and restaurants…Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months,'" Palin said in the post.
But in a second post on Tuesday, Reddy cited Labor and Commerce Department data that he said indicates "overall food price inflation has been historically low for the past year." Reddy said that while some commodities prices have increased, retailers have been reluctant to pass those costs on to customers due to "weak demand, high unemployment and thrifty shoppers."
Reddy pointed out that the sentence Palin quoted actually said, "An inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America's supermarkets and restaurants, threatening to end the tamest year of food pricing in nearly two decades."
"It does indeed report that supermarkets and restaurants are facing cost pressures that could push their retail prices higher – but it hasn't happened yet on a large scale," Reddy said. "Critics of the Fed's quantitative easing policy are focused primarily on concerns about potential future inflation."


Palin can NOT take any kind of criticism- she is such a witch- always having to have it her way. No one dares cross her in any way. She could never handle being President
The woman is a twit.
Just like Sarah to pick and choose her facts, then take a sentence out of context. She criticizes the Fed monetary policy at her own peril...she will be forced to defend her position, which she can't do without a speech in front of her. She knows nothing about Fed policy......an empty head. Not even Boehner or McConnell are dumb enough to criticize the Fed move....they know it will help exports. Funny that Sarah was at a manufacturing conference when she criticized the policy, which is intended to boost manufacturing and exports.
What do expect from Palin? She has to stretch the truth or she would have no talking points. Just part of the right's fear mongering. What? Things aren't that bad? Well let's say they are anyway. Get lost Sarah, my nose keeps getting longer Palin.
In the old days, people used to keep crazies like Ms. Palin in the attic even though you could still hear them howling at the moon at night. Today she's out and about howling at the sun, the moon, the Wall Street Journal, you name it. Time for you to take your funny-farm meds, Ms. Palin.
If Sarah Palin was the capton of the Titanic , she would have done nothing till the better cold end !
I'm more and more convinced that this so called lady is the self fulfilled prophecy of Satin returning as a woman dressed in red and black !
Oh great, now the woman is an economics expert. I guess she can add the WSJ to the news paper she read once and didn't get the point of the article or chose to ignore it since it didn't fit her narrative. Why am I not surprised.
Sarah, Please go home, sit on the porch and look at Russia.
Screech Palin would not have a clue what groceries cost these days, she is the most over paid celebrity in the country. If she cared about anything but her bank account she would not have deserted Alaska when she found out she was going to be charged with fraud for her bogus expense claims while she worked at home. With all the money she has ripped off her followers the last thing she needs to speak about is grocery money. Her state is a socialist state and she lost her bid to help take over the senate and she lost her own bloody state with her endorsement of Joe Miller.
Sarah Palin is a complete idiot.
There's no point in debating Sarah Palin on anything. She has her own personal set of "facts" and they are usually a world apart from any verifiable reality.
From what I understand, which is admittedly not much, the data that is used for measuring this is not always using the same products and it is not always standard staples either but some items used are at times obscure. The point is that the data tells the public what the data gatherer wants the public to hear. Reddy, then, may be a little deceptive here.
The reality, then, is what is the person who purchases the staples saying about the costs of groceries lately. Oddly enough, my wife mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that she was a bit alarmed that the costs of meat, produce, milk, vegetables, and so on have indeed gone up sharply in her opinion over the past couple of years. Her friends in other parts of the state have noted the same thing. Whether Palin is correct or not Reddy's argument appears to lack substance.
How do you debate a moron! Everyone knows, or should know, that Sarah Palin doesn't know DIDLY about monetary policy or quantitative easing. C'mon people, her handlers fed her some information, she committed it to short term memory and made a wad of cash for regurgitating it. It's how she makes money!
I guess making "facts" up is o.k. now. We don't need truth anymore. What good was it anyway, just got in the way!
I am no fan of Sarah Palin. Anyone who goes to the grocery knows how much prices have gone up. Also the package changes, you get alot less for your money. I wonder in what world these politicans live in and all these expert's who know nothing about trying to feed a family. I have been unemployed for over 1 year, applied to over 100 plus jobs with no results. I worry daily about trying to pay bills and feed our family. It makes me sick to see cheap bread at $2.00 plus a loaf. I don't trust Sarah Palin and definetily don't believe any expert or politican, they could care less about the poor working class.
So if she was prez and the omb issued its report on something she'd fight them too via facebook and twitter and say they too don't know what they're talking about but SHE does? This gets scarier by the minute and even moreso if you consider foreign relations! She complained the other day about being attacked by the media and if they just ASKED her she could debate them – ok sarah THAT -I'd like to see! Come on WSJ – ASK her!!!
If groceries are too high for you sarah get back in the helicopter and shoot a moose
CNN....... When are you ever going to STOP giving this BIMBO a headline ???? Now she knows all about economics when only two years ago she thought the Federal Reserve was part of the US government... Give her up....PLEASE !!!
Palin v. the WSJ??? isn't that like sending a pop warner football team to play on Monday Night football? I agree with TAM – that without grey matter, it isn't much of a fight.
Republicans are wanting the Democrats to "hire Pelosi" now that she was fired from her last job. I say alright, as long as the Republicans hire Palin to be the 2012 nominee.
How would Palin know anything about WSJ, she does not read anything other her fan club tweets.
As usual, Sarah is over her head again!
And this is what people want from a President????? Issues aside, if this is how she is going to respond to criticism.................Bush was criticized every day. He just went about his job (whether you agreed with or not). The same for Obama, he's criticized everyday (by this woman sometimes). He doesn't respond, he just goes about his job (again whether you agree or not). It's obvious she can't take any criticism......................noted how she QUIT on the state of Alaska just because she was charged with ethics violations (most of which were proven unfounded). Instead of fighting for Alaska, she just quit..........................nothing else need to be said, whether you agree or disagree with her.......she QUIT on Alaska.
Palin's an idiot. What makes her dangerous is that she's a motivated idiot, and she effectively channels the anger and frustration that so many folks who thought they were on track to security are feeling now because we've let the stinking banks reduce our personal value to a number and because present banking practices are so hostile to keeping that number accpetable. The other funny thing reading these posts is being able to ascertain who is posting from Androids. I have one too, and that Android automatic word selector is going to rewrite huge swaths of the English language. I'm getting to the point of being able to decipher what was actually typed by what the Android substituted for it, lol.
It's one thing to read and quite another thing to understand what you read. Palin reads but in her mama grizzly brain, it's hard to decipher the true interpretation of words and sentence structures. Yet, we are told she trained as a journalist. Good grief!