opinion article in the Tuesday Wall Street Journal. Bernanke explains carefully and clearly how the Federal Reserve has expanded the money supply. More important, he describes the mechanisms by which the Fed can contract the money supply when the velocity of money increases and the danger of inflation rises. Message to Barack Obama, who must decide by next February whether to reappoint Bernanke to another four-year term or to appoint someone else: the markets will trust me to put on the brakes when necessary.

Anyone else you appoint—even as justifiably esteemed an economist as Larry Summers—could be seen by the markets as a risk, as another Arthur Burns. Burns was also an esteemed economist, but as Fed Chairman he expanded the money supply to boost the economy in time for the 1972 reelection campaign of the president who appointed him, Richard Nixon—with hideous inflationary consequences for the rest of the decade.