The core of the tumult in current public discussion is the whipsaw between those who dread inflation and those who fear a relapse into economic decline and are aroused about health care. It took the former administration (but the same Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke) an unconscionable length of time to “break the glass” and pull the fire alarm, in former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s words. Then there flooded out from the Federal Reserve an unprecedented 100 percent one-year increase in the money supply, 30 or more times what is normal, as the Treasury bought hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of “troubled” or “toxic” assets.This total monetary immersion staved off the feared...