Romney Is Firm Where Fed Isn't on QE3

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Mitt Romney has done something the Federal Reserve has not: offer a firm response to QE3 advocates.

Romney, who has often eluded specific policy suggestions ( "Veterans Affairs," "Afghanistan," "foreign policy" and "short on specifics ") during his campaign, left no doubts Sunday when he told CNN that he thinks quantitative easing won't help the economy.

"I am sure the Fed is watching and will try to encourage the economy. But I don't think a massive new QE3 will help the economy," Romney said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Romney's comment came a few days after the Fed bypassed the possibility of adding more stimulus to the economy.

Equity markets popped two weeks ago when chatter emerged that Fed officials had grown more open to the possibility of monetary easing, and as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi pledged to preserve the eurozone.

Monetary stimulus -- which is central bank policy to repurchase bonds to increase the money supply -- is different from stimulus like the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Congress approved to increase public (government) spending to try and sustain jobs and prevent the economy from slipping deeper into recession.

Stimulus, regardless if it is monetary or fiscal, is a word negatively associated by many voters with their earned taxpayer dollars that the government distributed across a variety of struggling and bailed out companies during the Great Recession as blue- and white-collar workers hemorrhaged employment for more than two years.

Republicans have criticized the 2009 stimulus as having funded wasteful projects, and Romney has recently used it to slam Obama for having "outsourced"stimulus funds to foreign companies.

So far, the Fed and Chairman Ben Bernanke have echoed a more indirect version of Romney's sentiments for months. As the unemployment rate stagnated since the spring -- largely due to warm winter months that spurred atypical growth early in the year -- markets have shown impatience with the lumbering economy and have looked for the Fed to offset the struggle with a new version of its QE2 -- a program the central bank implemented in 2010 to purchase $600 billion in Treasury bonds.

Some economists suggest another round of quantitative easing may not be the best action for slowed growth in the United States.