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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 590069, member: 11668&quot;]The quoted statement is literally true, but very misleading.&nbsp; It would be more correct to begin with &quot;Since FDR&#039;s gold recall in 1933...&quot;, as that event is when inflation really became a semi-permanent feature of the economy.&nbsp; (Which, in fairness, was sort of the point--inflation looks pretty good when you&#039;re living through a deflationary depression.&nbsp; Or when you&#039;re afraid you&#039;re *about* to be living through one, hence why the Fed is creating a lot more dollars lately than they&#039;d usually do....)</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, it&#039;s not really accurate to characterize prices before the 20th century as &quot;very stable&quot;.&nbsp; Rather, prices had no particular direction over time--they seesawed up and down a lot, sometimes suddenly, but with a flat long-term trend.&nbsp; Those price swings are another thing the Fed&#039;s designed to alleviate; with its power to set interest rates and such, it&#039;s supposed to keep the economic bad times from getting *too* bad, and the good times from getting unsustainably good.&nbsp; And it&#039;s almost surely succeeding to an extent; the booms and busts we&#039;ve seen after 1933 haven&#039;t been anything like as severe as some of those seen before.&nbsp; (On the other hand, the Great Depression itself was probably worsened by the Fed&#039;s well-meaning attempts to fix it, but they&#039;ve gotten more experienced since then....)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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