(Reuters)

It's been a dismal few years for the dismal science, but even more so for the Republicans. The GOP has responded to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression by rediscovering the failed policies of the Great Depression. Hoovernomics -- tight money and tight budgets amidst a slump -- has become the new, old dogma of the Republican Party. It's a policy impervious to empirical evidence. Or, as House Speaker John Boenher showed, unaware of it.

On Thursday, Boehner sat down with Maria Bartiromo of CNBC to talk about the economy. Here's what he said about why markets have fallen so much the past few days:

But sell off is in large part due to the policies that we've had coming out of the Federal Reserve. You know, you can't continue to deflate our money and deflate it and deflate it-- have equity markets go-- without some change, yeah. Bernanke has made it clear he's doing these policies in the absence of the government doing its part to help improve our economy. That's why Democrats and Republicans here on Capitol Hill and the president need to deal with-- fix our tax code that would help us promote more economic growth and deal with our long term spending problem. We've spent more money than what we've brought in for 55 of the last 60 years. That ought to scare the hell out of every American.

Bookmark this, print it out, and put it in a time capsule, because this is about as wrong as anybody could possibly be about economics (excluding Don Luskin, of course). Now, Boehner doesn't put it very clearly, but when he says markets are going down because Bernanke is "deflating the dollar", he means markets are in the red because the Fed is weakening the dollar. The opposite is true. Markets sold off not because the Fed is doing too much, but because markets worry it won't do enough. As you can see below from Bloomberg, the dollar went up during the recent sell-off on Wednesday and Thursday after Bernanke explained how and when the Fed expects to wind down QE3. That's what happens when the Fed tightens policy.