Watch Bernanke’s ‘Little’ inflation capsize US
A little is all right. That’s the message Federal Reserve chairman Ben S Bernanke has been giving out recently when asked about the evidence of inflation in the US recovery. Sometimes Bernanke doesn’t even go that far. He simply says he doesn’t see inflation. The Fed chairman recently described the prospects for price increases across the board as “subdued.”
“Sudden” is more like it. The thing about inflation is that it comes out of nowhere and hits you. Monetary policy is like sailing. You’re gliding along, passing the peninsula, and you come about. Nothing. Then the wind fills the sail so fast it knocks you into the sea. Right now, the US is a sailboat that has just made open water, and has already come about. That wind is coming. The sailor just doesn’t know it.
“Sudden” has happened to us before. In World War I, an early version of what we would call the CPI-U, the consumer price index for urban areas, went from 1% for 1915 to 7% in 1916 to 17% in 1917. To returning vets, that felt awful sudden.
How did it happen? The Treasury spent like crazy on the war, creating money to pay for it, then pretended that its spending was offset by complex Liberty Bond sales and admonishments to citizens that they save more.
Country in denial
In other words, the Woodrow Wilson administration was in denial, inflating in all but name. Commenting on one complex plan to make more money available, Representative L.T.
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