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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 3, 2009 / 9 Shevat 5769

Inflation alert: Bills' money-supply mayhem

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The central economic crisis of the next five years may not be the greed-induced worldwide recession we're now mired in — but the rampant global inflation that the politicians' response to that recession could trigger. Recessions, and even depressions, come and go. But inflation has the potential to stick around for decades.


Look at what the TARP bailout has done to the money supply. From 2000 through 2007, the money supply rose on average by $351 billion a year, with annual growth only once exceeding $400 billion. In 2008, the money supply grew by $691 billion. And that includes only the first half of the TARP package and none of the coming "stimulus" package.


In the short term, this increase in the money supply won't cause inflation, but only counteracts the deflationary effect of all the money that vanished in the meltdown, or went into hiding since. But when confidence returns and that cash comes back into circulation, we'll have much too much money chasing too few goods and services — a prescription for rampant inflation.


Today's woes were induced by a combination of a political willingness to let businesses make money by making loans they shouldn't have and of businesses' alacrity in walking through that open door in search of mind-numbing profits. But we seem to be collectively blind to the likelihood that the same political tendency to give out goodies and spare us pain is now leading the government to borrow so much and so increase the money supply that inflation will be the consequence.


After all, it was the political desire to bring good news to voters that led government to make it possible for people to buy homes they couldn't afford and kids to go to colleges they couldn't pay for and families to buy cars that were too costly and businesses to survive off debt long after they ceased to turn a profit.


Now, the same desire to get re-elected is leading politicians to offer a trillion-dollar stimulus package to benefit (some) voters, along with a bailout to banks, insurers, car companies and (soon enough, no doubt) countless other failing firms.


Eventually, we will all feel the pain when inflation sets in. Then, government will have no choice but to induce a deep recession akin to the one Paul Volker triggered in the late '70s and early '80s to cure the "stagflation" left us by the policies of Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.


President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are selling soothing syrup to their political base at a price of massive inflation and agony for the future. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address holds doubly true today: "Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money."


Democrats have, of course, always been willing to tolerate a certain level of inflation in an effort to hold down joblessness. But the lengths to which they are now going to spare us immediate pain and the implications of a doubling of the money supply in one year are beyond rational calculus.


It's hard to believe that any administration, set of economists or political party could be this irresponsible or so focused on the next election that they are literally willing to mortgage much of the next decade to win it.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Fleeced: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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