Inflation is good for us

Of course, that depends on how one defines "us."

I'm advocating 6 percent inflation for at least a couple of years," Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist, has told Bloomberg News. "It would ameliorate the debt bomb and help us work through the deleveraging process.

"There's trillions of dollars of debt, in mortgage debt, consumer debt, government debt ..." Mr. Rogoff said. "It's a question of how do you achieve the deleveraging. Do you go through a long period of slow growth, high savings and many legal problems, or do you accept higher inflation?"

As Patrice Hill says in the Washington Times:

Worries about whether political leaders will summon the resolve to tackle deficits are fed by talk that the debt has grown so large that the country will have to maintain moderate rates of inflation in order to pay it down. Paying off debt is easier with inflated dollars; that is the way the government "paid off" much of the debt incurred during World War II, the last time the country ran up such massive deficits.

"(P)olitical leaders...summon the resolve to tackle deficits"? Surely we can count on the President to protect us.

Still, it seems like a good time to have a large, fixed rate mortgage.