That's exactly how it would happen. And their thinking
would be wrong.

I don't know what's going on, but I understand that all the Bigs will be redesigned on March 1

This has been the unintended consequence of "printing money" in
the last few years.

The intention was that the money would flow into banks, and from there
into businesses and people's salaries. But that isn't what happened
at all. Instead, people and businesses who were crushed by the 2007
credit crunch are deleveraging and hoarding money, fearing that
they'll never be able to borrow money again.

However, something had to happen to all that "printed" money
being poured into the system. Some of it went into Treasuries,
which is why yields are historically low. Some of it went
into the stock market bubble.

But a lot of it went into commodities -- copper, oil, gold, food --
because one could see that China was sucking up every possible
commodity in the world. This caused the prices of gasoline and food
to rise, although prices of other things fell. So the net CPI was
low, but the things you need most -- food and fuel -- went up.

The people in Washington say that they understand all this, and that
any future QE will be done in some kind of very clever way that will
avoid these problems. However, I don't believe that's possible in a
generational crisis era.

In order to have hyperinflation you need TWO things: printing money
and high velocity of money.

Velocity of money refers to the number of times a given dollar is used
-- to buy goods, to pay salaries, etc. People and businesses have
been hoarding cash and deleveraging, so the velocity of money has been
crashing. Thus, even though there's already been $15-20 TRILLION in
money "printing" in the last few years, the velocity of money has been
collapsing too fast to allow hyperinflation. The velocity of money is
expected to continue falling for the next ten years, as deleveraging
continues.

QE3 will "print" another trillion or so, but with the velocity of
money still crashing, it won't cause inflation.

Few will, because that would expose their own complicity
and bad practices.

I agree. You mention the 2011 London street riots. Young people
destroyed and looted numerous stores, stealing large screen tv's and
other items. Although looting was widespread, that wasn't the only
motive. There were several BBC interviews of the looters who said
something to the effect, "I did it because the police couldn't do
anything about it. I just wanted to prove that we could do anything
we wanted, and the police couldn't stop us." This is exactly the kind
of "revenge on Boomers" attitude that I'm talking about.

I can tell you this: History shows that the people in what you call
the "Me Generation" or "Early Gen-Xers," and what I would call "early
Nomads", are in many ways the most powerful age group in history --
for good or ill -- containing some of the greatest monsters (Hitler,
Stalin) and the greatest heroes (Lincoln, FDR). Obama is also in that
age group, and it remains to be seen what kind of role he'll fulfill.

The target audience for my book is what I call "Tea Party Boomers."

I've researched and written a great deal on this subject. Just one
example: When Germany capitulated on November 11, 1918, German troops
were still deep within Belgian and French territory. Writing in 1931,
Winston Churchill said that if Germany had continued to fight, they
would have been capable of inflicting two million more casualties upon
the enemy. Churchill added that the Allies would not have put Germany
to the test: simply by fighting on a little longer, the Allies would
have negotiated a peace with no reparations, on terms far more
favorable to Germany than actually occurred in the peace dictated by
the Allies. One more example: The 1914 Christmas truce.

Responding to several comments: You're right that the standard
definition of Generation-X starts them in birth year 1963 or 1964.

But from the point of view of generational theory, what matters is
when a child is old enough to know what's going on, and is able to
adopt generational attitudes and behaviors, usually around five years
old. So in generational theory, the Boomers start from birth year
1942, and the Gen-Xers start from birth year 1959.

In the case of Obama and Begala, they are clearly Gen-Xers, and based
on their writings, I'm sure they wouldn't be caught dead calling
themselves Boomers.