THE WHIPPIN' ENDED YEARS AGO :

The End of the Age of Inflation (Robert J. Samuelson, August 28, 2002, The Washington Post)

The Age of Inflation is ending the way it began: quietly. Along with the Cold War, the rise and fall of inflation has been a defining event of the present era --
but one that is overlooked, because inflation receded so gradually that almost no one appreciates its historic significance. For four decades, Americans rode the inflation roller coaster up and down with huge economic, political and social consequences. It shaped how we live, affecting everything from the rise of political conservatism to yesterday's stock market frenzy and today's housing boom.

The inflation roller coaster, as measured by the consumer price index, proceeded from a meager 1.4 percent in 1960 to a peak of 13.3 percent in 1979 and then coasted down. In 2001, it was 1.6 percent. On the way up, Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 -- a pivotal political moment -- stemmed heavily from an anti-inflation backlash. People despaired at the double-digit onslaught, which disrupted all sense of order and predictability in everyday life. No one could know from week to week the prices of food, clothing or almost anything.

Lenin once said that "the way to crush the bourgeoisie [the middle class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." In America, that process discredited government, which people blamed for inflation's ravages.

Personally, I think Mr. Samuelson may be the best columnist in America, certainly the best economic columnist. But it's simply inaccurate to say that the end of inflation has been overlooked, as a general matter. It's true that it's taken the mainstream--which is to say, liberal--press quite a while to figure it out, but conservatives like Jack Kemp, Larry Kudlow, Bob Novak, Newt Gingrich, etc., have been criticizing the Fed for keeping interests rates artificially high for years now. In fact, here's what perceptive Fed critics were writing 18 months ago. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 28, 2002 3:48 PM