Rick Perry threatens Ben Bernanke

Only two days officially into his run for president, Texas Governor Rick Perry is already picking out opponents to tackle on the way to the White House. Enemy number one: The Federal Reserve’s Ben Bernanke.

Perry had some harsh words for Bernanke while speaking in Iowa on Monday. In a speech given in Cedar Rapids yesterday, Perry suggested that perhaps a little down-home Texas justice is what’s necessary to whip Bernanke and the Fed into shape.“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” Perry said. “Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous – or treasonous in my opinion.”That practice of printing more money is what the Fed calls quantitative easing, and experts suggest that they will offer up a third round of paper-printing this year in order to lower borrowing costs. Perry says that with two attempts at quantitative easing thus far unable to save an economy in dire straits since the recession subsided in 2009, one more go will only make matters worse.“We’ve already tried this,” Perry said in Cedar Rapids. “All it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your pocket and we cannot afford that. We have to learn the lessons of the past three years that they’ve been devastating. The President of the United States has conducted an experiment on the American economy for almost the last three years, and it has gone tragically wrong and we need to send him a clear message in November of 2012 that new leadership is coming.”From there, Perry was quick to offer more quips against President Barack Obama, calling into question the commander in chief’s own affinity for America. Upon launching into a soliloquy about his passion for his country, going as far as to call himself a candidate “that’s in love with America,” Perry was prompted with whether or not he thought President Obama was also a patriot that loved the USA.“You need to ask him,” responded the Texas governor.It was only this past Saturday that Perry formally announced that he would be running for the GOP nomination for the presidency in 2012. That same day, voters in the Ames Straw Poll cast enough votes for Michele Bachmann to take the way, followed by Ron Paul and Tim Pawlenty.