Inflation Vacation: Delving Into The Numbers

Since the economic crisis began, two of the more hotly debated issues among liberals and conservatives have been inflation and debt.

Liberals generally argued that inflation wasn’t an issue and that continued intervention through aggressive fiscal and monetary policy was the best way to deal with the economic crisis.

On the other end, conservatives pointed out the terrible precedents and increased risk from inflation by expansionary monetary policy and the long-term consequences of continued government spending through debt.

Inflation - Who was right?

Here’s what inflation has done.

Overall, inflation is up about 16% since 2007.  The largest inflation anomaly year occurred in the early part of 2008, jumping...