Bunning slams Bernanke as US inflation surges to 26-year high

July 16, 2008 (LBO) - US consumer prices hit a 26-year as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke came under renewed fire from a US senator for printing money willy-nilly and stampeding the world into an inflation crisis. The US Bureau of Labour Statistics said 12-month consumer prices of urban consumers surged to 5.0 percent in June, a 26-year high, with prices jumping a massive 1.0 in that month alone.

Federal Reserve had been printing money to bail out failing banks in particular and credit markets in general by printing vast volumes of money to bring rates down through a series of cuts since August 2007, sending commodities like oil to record highs.

"I am deeply concerned about what the Fed has done in the last year and in the last decade," Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky said on the first day of congressional testimony by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke.

"Chairman Greenspan’s easy money the late nineties and then following the tech bust inflated the housing bubble and created the mess we are in today.

"Chairman Bernanke’s easy money in the last year has undermined the dollar and sent oil to new record highs every few days, and almost doubling since the rate cuts started. Inflation is here and it is