Ben Bernanke is one of the most dangerous men walking the planet. In this age of central bank domination of economic life, he is surely the pied piper of monetary ruin.

At least since 2002 he has been talking about "helicopter money" as if a notion which is pure economic quackery actually had some legitimate basis. But strip away the pseudo-scientific jargon, and it amounts to monetization of the public debt—–the very oldest form of something for nothing economics.

Back then, of course, Ben's jabbering about helicopter money was taken to be some sort of theoretical metaphor about the ultimate powers of central bankers, and especially their ability to forestall the boogeyman of "deflation".

Indeed, Bernanke was held to be a leading economic scholar of the Great Depression and a disciple of Milton Friedman's claim that Fed stringency during 1930-1932 had caused it. This is complete poppycock, as I demonstrated in The Great Deformation, but it did give an air of plausibility and even conservative pedigree to a truly stupid and dangerous idea.

Right about then, in fact, Bernanke grandly promised during a speech at Friedman's 90th birthday party that today's enlightened central bankers—led by himself—-would never let it happen again.

Presumably, Bernanke was speaking of the 25% deflation of the general price level after 1929. The latter is always good for a big scare among modern audiences because no one seems to remember that the deflation of the 1930's was nothing more than the partial liquidation of the 100%-300% inflation of the general price level during the Great War.

In any event, Bernanke was tilting at windmills when he implied that the collapse of the US wartime and Roaring Twenties boom had anything to do with the conditions of 2002. Even the claim that Japan was suffering from severe deflation at the time was manifestly false.