How Quickly Can Price Inflation Explode to the Upside?
by Robert Wenzel
LewRockwell.com
The answer: Very quickly.
Amity Shlaes is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her writings are followed carefully by the top of the top at CFR. And to a significant degree she uses Hayekian business cycle theory in analyzing the economy. She also has the distinct honor of being hated and attacked by the Keynesian Paul Krugman.
In other words, take her very seriously.
Yesterday, I wrote on how confused Bernanke was by stating that price inflation was of little concern. Here’s Shlaes putting things in historical perspective:
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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 percent for 1915 to 7 percent in 1916 to 17 percent in 1917. To returning vets, that felt awful sudden.
The Rest…HERE
