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Bernanke and company are trying to reflate the economy with almost stated objective of inflation at 2 percent and higher in order to provide some type of safety margin for a future recession. That's where they want to go.
Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don't have as much to sell. Your workers don't want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That's inflation.
Taxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all - to different degrees - unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual's effort and reward for that effort.
What we have to be careful is that if we drop interest rates where the rate of interest is lower than inflation, then savers will not put money in financial savings and move it to gold and real estate, which is bad for India.
This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.
Models used to describe and predict inflation commonly distinguish between changes in food and energy prices - which enter into total inflation - and movements in the prices of other goods and services - that is, core inflation.
The industrial world enjoys a rare combination of growth and low inflation; the 'Washington consensus,' a model of economic development that emphasizes macroeconomic discipline and open markets, is being adopted by more countries.
It is human nature that when you see something work well, you do more of it. If, in its ceaseless quest for revenue, government sees a seemingly harmless method of raising funds without causing much inflation, it will grab on to it.
If you're afraid of inflation, I think - and if you can bring yourself to have a long horizon - and when I say long, I mean ten to 20 years, not the usual ten to 20 weeks - that locking up resources in the ground is a terrific idea.
I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.
One day we will have more inflation, and our bonds will bleed like a pig. The only reason for buying long bonds is short-term or as a desperate haven for terrorized investors. But the potential to make longer-term real money is naught.
With the sugar market hysteria, the people are obviously worried and expect higher inflation. When this hysteria subsides, which we're probably observing, then I hope that people will also get less worried about the future of inflation.
If Congress wanted to intervene with the Federal Reserve, well, we created the Federal Reserve. We could uncreate it. But would you want Congress regulating the money supply? We'd have drowned in inflation, or gone bankrupt, decades ago.
The two important variables for the policy formulation are projected inflation and the output gap. There is no clear hidebound mathematics that we must give 'X' weight to inflation and 'Y' weight to growth and form the associated policy.
If global oil prices or commodity prices are high, then it is bound to create inflation. So, we should not be too worried if the inflation is created by global commodity prices. When they come down, inflation will automatically come down.
You could not buy a house in those days without just assuming that the house was not only a place to live, but it was a good investment, because it was going to keep up with inflation or get ahead of inflation, and it was just - that was America.
In essence, the stock market represents three separate categories of business.They are, adjusted for inflation, those with shrinking intrinsic value, those with approximately stable intrinsic value, and those with steadily growing intrinsic value.
I would say to my colleague that the misery index, inflation and unemployment, when added together is the lowest it has been in the last series of Presidents, even going back to Jimmy Carter. So I think the Bush administration is doing a good job.
Efforts to promote financial stability through adjustments in interest rates would increase the volatility of inflation and employment. As a result, I believe a macro-prudential approach to supervision and regulation needs to play the primary role.
All kinds of excuses have been given by governments for not implementing this recommendation like food price inflation. But the question is, do the farmers of this country, who constitute nearly half of the working population, also not need to eat?
Of course, looking tough on inflation is part of any central banker's job description: if investors believe that inflation is going to get out of control, you end up with higher interest rates and capital flight, and a vicious circle quickly ensues.
The financial crisis and the Great Recession posed the most significant macroeconomic challenges for the United States in a half-century, leaving behind high unemployment and below-target inflation and calling for highly accommodative monetary policies.
And I am convinced that a single focus on preserving the purchasing power of the dollar, in effect, guarding against inflation or deflation, actually creates a solid foundation for the greatest job growth and the strongest economy that America can have.
Because food and energy prices are volatile, it is often helpful to look at inflation excluding those two categories - known as core inflation - which is typically a better indicator of future overall inflation than recent readings of headline inflation.
My decision to leave applied mathematics for economics was in part tied to the widely-held popular belief in the 1960s that macroeconomics had made fundamental inroads into controlling business cycles and stopping dysfunctional unemployment and inflation.
The reason I am so negative about the Federal Reserve's policies is that they only target core inflation and argue that they can't identify bubbles, but when each bubble bursts, they flood the system with liquidity that brings about unintended consequences.
During the 1970s, inflation expectations rose markedly because the Federal Reserve allowed actual inflation to ratchet up persistently in response to economic disruptions - a development that made it more difficult to stabilize both inflation and employment.
Starting in the wake of the 2008 GFC (Global Financial Crisis), market observers have warned of a crash in the bond market. Initially, it was believed that the trillions printed to bail out the banks would cause inflation and, therefore, a flight from bonds.
The Federal Reserve has an official commitment to two different policies. One is to prevent inflation from getting too high. The second is to maintain high employment... the European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.
Once an economy reaches a certain level of acceleration... the Fed is no longer with you... The Fed, instead of trying to get the economy moving, reverts to acting like the central bankers they are and starts worrying about inflation and things getting too hot.
I can tell you what happens to countries that go bankrupt. I've been to Argentina. I'm familiar with the history of Mexico and Great Britain. We'll see the same things here shortly: inflation, huge tax increases, capital flight and, eventually, capital controls.
A cheaper British currency could be a crisis if its swift move provoked a broader financial crisis, which it has not, or if it triggered massive inflation. For now, cheaper sterling will hurt some British households and enterprises while being a boon for others.
Life is full of joys and sorrows, much of it our own making. Sadly, the West has voted time and time again for bigger government, more inflation, higher taxes and excessive regulation - all policies that have kept us from Adam Smith's vision of an opulent society.
It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels.
American economists can't understand the German fear of inflation and the effects of inflation when dealing with the world economic crisis. They wonder why Germany pursues such a different course - 'Why can't they agree with us?' I would have thought it was fairly obvious.
Plutocrats were the chief beneficiaries of so-called neoliberalism and the suite of political changes it brought beginning in the late 1970s - deregulation, weaker protection for unions, the shareholder value movement, and the subsequent inflation of executive compensation.
Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.
But clearly an economy that's growing and expanding like this one - and it certainly is doing that with high GDP output, employment numbers strong, capacity utilization strong - that's an environment in which the Fed needs to continually be alert to early signs of inflation.
Although most Americans apparently loathe inflation, Yale economists have argued that a little inflation may be necessary to grease the wheels of the labor market and enable efficiency-enhancing changes in relative pay to occur without requiring nominal wage cuts by workers.
What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.
It's not about the pace, it's about the direction we've set. The pace is of course a function of many factors, including the magnitude of the supply shock. But what's probably more important is the probability of the supply shock translating into sustainable embedded inflation.
After World War II, there were a lot of pension funds in Europe that were fully funded, but they were pressured to hold a lot of government debt. There was a lot of inflation, and the value of all those assets fell. Those pension funds couldn't honor their promises to the people.
The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.
The Fed's buying is far more important to the market price of U.S. debt than any other economic variable. If the Fed stops buying, it doesn't matter whether unemployment goes up or down. It doesn't matter whether inflation is higher or lower. Its influence on the market is dominant.
We will not play with inflation. We are living a delicate moment. President Obama spoke to me today about the high unemployment affecting the United States. In this crisis period, when the developed nations are not recovering, it's prudent to maintain the established inflation target.
Unlike China's growth story, which has been built on the strategy of creating excess supply, the Indian growth story has been built on the strategy of responding to incentives generated by excess demand. Which is why a certain degree of inflation is built into the Indian growth process.
No one should expect the value of their house to appreciate quickly - counting on your home to be a significant part of your retirement saving isn't a winning strategy - but it is reasonable to expect that prices generally will rise with at least the rate of inflation for some time to come.
Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
To fix Social Security, we should first stop using the Consumer Price Index to adjust benefits for inflation. Using the C.P.I. overstates the impact of inflation and has also led to larger increases in benefits for Social Security recipients than the income gains of typical American workers.
I will say this: the central banks can actually support growth beyond a point. When there is no inflation, they can cut interest rates, and that is the way they support growth, but if you cut interest rate to the bone, there is nothing more to cut. It is very hard to support growth beyond that.