Governments inflate--what's called counterfeiting in the private sector--as an underhanded way to increase their spending, and as a reward to the big banks and other special interests, and the heck with the consequences.

The government's CPI has always understated actual price increases--the most visible effect of inflation--but now the Fed's buzzards are coming home to roost.

Inflation has a redistributionary effect from the people at large, especially the poor and the retired, to the government, the banks, and government contractors, who get the newly created money first, and can spend it before it diminishes in value.

Then the rest of us pick up the tab in the form, for example, of much higher food prices.

This is a criminal process no different than outright theft, except that it is disguised, and also brings on recessions and depressions. Oh, and we are supposed to admire the Official Crooks as versus the private variety.

As Murray Rothbard said, the state is only "a band of thieves writ large."