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During the 1970s, inflation expectations rose markedly because the Federal Reserve allowed actual inflation to ratchet up persistently in response to economic disruptions - a development that made it more difficult to stabilize both inflation and employment.

The stagflation of the 1970s blessed us with damaging wage and price controls and the utterly counterintuitive supply-side notion - famously drawn on a napkin - that cutting taxes would lead to higher tax revenues.

Thirty years ago, many economists argued that inflation was a kind of minor inconvenience and that the cost of reducing inflation was too high a price to pay. No one would make those arguments today.

It was gradually learned that acceptance of a somewhat higher inflation rate would not really bring somewhat higher employment.

After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.

When people begin anticipating inflation, it doesn't do you any good anymore, because any benefit of inflation comes from the fact that you do better than you thought you were going to do.

Since World War II, inflation - the apparently inexorable rise in the prices of goods and services - has been the bane of central bankers.

In the panic of 1819, the protectionists stressed the lack of consumer markets abroad and the necessity for building up a market at home. The inflationists, on the other hand, stressed the shortage of money capital available to manufacturers as a cause of the crisis.

Inflation was driven by higher labor costs, not higher goods costs. Frankly, I'd love to see a little bit of that. Because I'd love to pay people more. I'd love to see rising wages for everybody.

Inflation outstripped real wages for people who work for pay from others.