“But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation. Of course, the U.S. government is not going to print money and distribute it willy-nilly (although as we will see later, there are practical policies that approximate this behavior)” - Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke before the National Economists Club, Washington, D.C., November 21, 2002

Watch out. This guy is a real nutter, IMO. The “Helicopter Ben” of course alludes to the similarity to Milton Friedman’s famous suggestion that to stimulate the economy the government could simply randomly drop money from helicopters.

“‘Of all the Fed governors, Bernanke is the one I would be most fearful of,’ said Rich Parker, head of trading at Stamford Group. ‘He is too fast with the trigger and his take on inflation and deflation has been proven wrong.’”

“I actually turned on Bubblevision for a moment right before the announcement, just to see what kind of hoopla was going to surround this. When I watched George, Al, and Bennie walk into the room, my first thought was that these three were the Moe, Larry, and Curly of economic and monetary policy — and as incompetent a trio as one could ever assemble.” - Bill Fleckenstein