First, one should not rely on consensus or general agreement. Historically, the "consensus" or prevailing theory has been wrong or substantially flawed many ti

First, one should not rely on consensus or general agreement. Historically, the "consensus" or prevailing theory has been wrong or substantially flawed many times. Furthermore in most scientific fields one can find a number of highly qualified dissidents who do not accept the "consensus." They are often small in absolute number, but an absolute consensus is quite rare. Finally, periods of rapid scientific and technological progress are often characterized by a lack of consensus. Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve policies are largely the prescription of Milton Friedman and the monetarists. Friedman argued that the Great Depression was caused by allegedly tight monetary policy in the 1930's that resulted in a massive series of runs on banks and crashes. He argued that the Great Depression could have been averted by loose monetray policy along the lines of quantitative easing. For many years, until recently, conservative, business, and libertarian groups embraced Friedman's ideas probably in part because quoted out of context, they shifted the blame for the Great Depression from misconduct and bad decisions by private corporations and wealthy individuals to the federal government and civil servants who provide little funding to conservative, business, and libertarian lobbying groups. Friedman's arguments also argued that the government need only have provided cheap money to prevent/cure the Great Depression rather than activist government programs such as Social Security and the alphabet soup of public works programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Keynesian economics strongly disagreed with the Friedman/monetarist theory. Keynesians argue that the United Staes did have loose monetary policy in the 1930's and it did not work. They argue that the United States and much of the world was in a liquidity trap, an unusuall situation in which interest rates reach or nearly reach zero but a negative interest rate is needed to produce a revival of consumption and demand. Pouring money into the economy through the Federal Reserve or other central bank won't work. Nor will there be much inflation, because the money just sits in bank accounts unused. In Keynesian economics, absent some extreme positive economic shock like the invention of a new energy source, the government must borrow heavily and spend heavily to restart the economy, pulling it out of the liquidity trap, which it is argued is what World War II finally did in the 1940s. Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman and Dean Baker argue that the United States has been in a liquidity trap since the crash in 2008. The liquidity trap theory makes a prediction that has so far been borne out, that inflation will remain low despite the huge infusion of money from quantitative easing and huge budget deficits. These other folks such as John Taylor, Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, and various other cricits of both Ben Bernanke and the Keynesians like Krugman have been consistently wrong about inflation for the last five years. Sincerely, John