With the historic collapse of oil prices and glutted tankers sloshing around off the coast of Los Angeles, some forecasters are predicting deflation as far as they can see. They tend to believe that shocks to supplies cause inflation or deflation in commodities that spreads through the economy like a virus.
Others look to the Fed gorging itself on anything that resembles financial paper and predict hyperinflation like that of Germany a century ago or Zimbabwe recently. Historically, growth in the Fed's balance sheet signaled a rapidly expanding supply of money that would ignite inflation.