I saw a young man, whose mother is from Boston, at the US Consulate General in Toronto; the consulate refused to acknowledge his US citizenship and issue him a passport yesterday.  He blamed the Tea Party movement’s influence on Congress.  He is by all counts a East coast liberal, 18-year old brain full of mush, wanting to emigrate to the US, get involved in the Democrat Party and the support the unions.  But is it his fault?  When the smartest people in the world are also stuck on stupid.

Look at Dr. Benjamin Bernanke, PhD.  He says the current inflation is low but caused really by a spike in commodity prices (from Reuters):

A recent increase in U.S. inflation is driven primarily by rising commodity prices globally, and is unlikely to persist, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Monday. …

Along the same lines, Bernanke argued that supply and demand factors are driving energy and commodity costs higher, but that these should eventually stabilize, allowing the United States to avoid any inflation troubles.

“I think the increase in inflation will be transitory,” Bernanke said in response to questions after a speech. “Our expectation at this point is that in the medium term inflation, if anything, will be a bit low. We will monitor inflation and inflation expectations very closely.”

Let me see if I understand Bernanke’s logic.  He believes that he can triple the money base in two years, but that commodity inflation is transitory.  Huh???  Get real.  If you want commodities to decrease you have to shrink the money supply.

Formerly with the Obama administration’s brain trust but now back in academia, Dr. Christine Romer, PhD, fears that there will be no QE III, for QE II worked so handsomely to get things going again.  Be careful with this video interview of Dr. Romer with my favorite Yahoo personality, Aaron Task: it can cause brain freeze, incredulity and a desire to throw things at your computer monitor.  Dr. Romer believes the best way to solve unemployment is through debauching the currency.  Of course, for the last two years, that’s exactly what the Fed has done, and the employment rate is pretty pathetic.  So what do you do when a policy doesn’t work?  Well it is obvious that you didn’t do enough of it.  So QE II is faltering because Bernanke hasn’t yet promised QE III.  Amazing.