Ron Paul, who would like to roll the clock back to 1909 from 2009, gave Bernanke a chance to shred his silly arguments on the Fed monetizing the debt. Bernanke said that when the Fed finishes with its $300 bln in Treasury purchases it will have a smaller amount of Treasuries on its balance sheet than it did before the crisis began two years ago. It will also have a much smaller percentage of the debt outstanding than two years ago given the huge increase in government borrowings.

The “ammo and canned-goods” (hyper-inflation) crowd won’t listen, but those are the facts.