In the U.S., one presidential contender seeking to oust President Barack Obama has attacked the country's central bank and its chairman as part of his campaign.

Republican Rick Perry, the long-standing governor of the large southwestern state of Texas, formally announced his candidacy last weekend to try to win his party's nomination to oppose Mr. Obama in next year's presidential election. He has attacked Mr. Obama's economic policies, but also pointedly zeroed in on operations at the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Ben Bernanke.

Earlier in the week, the blunt-spoken Perry said that he thinks that if Bernanke approves “printing more money” to boost the country's sluggish economy in advance of the November 2012 election it would be “almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion.” He said that if Bernanke did that, Texans “would treat him pretty ugly.”

Democrats supporting Mr. Obama in his bid for another four-year term — and some of Perry's fellow Republicans — condemned Perry's comments as intemperate. But Perry did not back down.

On Wednesday, while campaigning in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, Perry said the Federal Reserve should “open their books up” and be more transparent. He said that would “go a long way” to show whether any of the central bank's operations had been “improper.”

The independent U.S. central bank has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy in an effort to boost its recovery from the 2008 recession and cut the nation's stubbornly high unemployment rate that has hovered around 9 percent for more than two years. Bernanke has also pledged to keep its key interest rate at near zero for another two years and hinted at a further infusion of cash.

Perry, as well as other key Republican presidential contenders like former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, say that more government spending will not speed the recovery of the economy.

Rather, they say, the government needs to sharply cut its deficit spending and avoid tax increases. Mr. Obama is seeking both spending cuts and higher taxes on wealthy Americans. He plans to announce a new jobs program next month.