 Now, Austrian business cycle theory holds that increases in the money supply, that stimulus more generally leads to increases in prices as a process of the distortions in the economy's capital structure that are brought about through a credit expansion, what Austrians call malinvestment. Now some critics of Austrian business cycle theory, Paul Krugman for example, have said the fact that consumer prices measured by the CPI have not increased dramatically since 2008 is a very strong argument against Austrian business cycle theory. According to these critics, Austrians, or they say Austrians would have expected Zimbabwe style hyperinflation as a result of quantitative easing and the other sorts of stimulus programs. We haven't seen anything like that. Consumer prices have been relatively stable. Therefore, the Austrians must be wrong. We must really be in a Keynesian style liquidity trap. The economy must be operating below potential. We need even more stimulus. Now, these kinds of arguments fundamentally misunderstand, maybe deliberately so, what the Austrians have said about credit expansion. Austrian economics holds that credit expansion and other kinds of stimulus causes malinvestment in the economy, investment in the wrong kinds of goods and services, in particular increased investment in capital intensive, lengthy or more roundabout capital goods and structures of production. This does cause distortions in the economy and it does artificially increase prices in particular sectors. But nowhere in Austrian business cycle theory is it claimed that the immediate effect of credit expansion is a rise in consumer prices, much less a rise in an artificially constructed and increasingly meaningless aggregate such as the CPI. In fact, if you look at prices of valuable assets, we see a great deal of asset price inflation since 2008. Prices of equities, the stock market, of course, is one example. Prices of commodities, minerals and so forth, land and particular agricultural land, collectibles and other valuable items, those prices have increased dramatically since 2008 such that around the world many commentators are beginning to worry about asset price inflation and asset price bubbles. So the events since 2008 are very consistent with what the Austrians have said about the effect of monetary policy, namely we're not helping the economy, we're not creating real growth, we're simply perpetuating the malinvestments that got us in trouble in the first place with the financial crisis and the recession.