They believe a little inflation is not only good, but necessary. According to this view the real boogeyman is deflation—"a general decline in prices," per Ben Bernanke—and government's monopoly money-manager is dedicated to doing everything possible to keep prices forever rising.

Not everyone cherishes having their money driven into the abyss of worthlessness by the deliberate actions of others, but given its overwhelming fear of deflation, along with the profit for a connected few in counterfeiting, the Fed goes ahead and ruins our money anyway.

Admittedly, when your job is to print paper mandated as legal tender at almost no cost, in such a manner that the general public is made unaware of the pain yet to come, who likely have no idea even what your job is other than making muddled public pronouncements, things can occasionally get out of hand. In the extreme, this can lead to inflationary disasters such as those that occurred in Germany, Hungary, China, Greece, Israel, Zimbabwe (twice), Yugoslavia, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, and most recently Lebanon. By 2018, for instance, the annual inflation rate in once-prosperous Venezuela hit one million percent. Zimbabwe, having achieved an estimated annual inflation rate of 89.7 sextillion percent in November 2008, cooled down then re-ignited again to 737 percent by July 2020.

Hidden behind these percentages was pain most Americans can't imagine. A former Lebanese entrepreneur, who lost everything during his country's monetary meltdown, reflected on his experience:

Watching ordinary people resort to crime and violence just to feed their children and care for sick relatives is the inevitable conclusion of a currency collapse. People are never prepared for it and the desperation leads to severe consequences.

In the US, Fed chairman Paul Volcker, appointed by President Carter in 1979 to put a brake on inflation that would peak at 11.6 percent the following year, took a cold-blooded approach and simply stopped printing money rather than directly raising interest rates. In response to questions during his Senate confirmation hearing, Volcker told them,

. . .the [money] supply had been "rising at a pretty good clip," and there was no evidence the nation was "suffering grievously from a shortage of money."