Expect inflation as money from gov't policies buys rising commodities: Philipps

Author Kevin Phillips expects rising inflation, similar to the 1970s, as the economy recovers from the current recession.

Last year, Philiips wrote the book titled “Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism.” A paperback edition was released on March 31.

Phillips says Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has thrown away hundreds of billions of dollars and more than doubled the Fed’s balance sheet, he says in his new book, according to Reuters.

“What you're seeing Bernanke do is he's trying to create a bailout reflationary bubble, which he can't describe as a bubble, just as [Former Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan couldn't describe the housing mortgage bubble as a bubble. What we're seeing by Bernanke is a covert attempt to rebubble,” he told Reuters.

He also thinks that the current economic recession has masked a bubble which is growing in commodities. Excess cash and rising commodities prices spell trouble, he says.

My theory is that if we are in a commodities cycle, what you will get will be more like 1973-74-75 ... where as soon as the recovery begins you get rising inflation because you're going to play havoc with all money supply and liquidity that's been unleashed he said.