Are there inflation risks from abroad? How does globalization affect the inflation rate here?
If you go to Faulkner’s dry cleaning … and you talk to Mr. Faulkner, he’ll tell you that the price of wire hangers has been increasing dramatically because of demand from China. … Here’s Mr. Faulkner, with three dry-cleaning operations in Dallas, Texas, and if you sit down and talk to him, he talks to you about China. How do we square that corner? One way to do it, I think, is to certainly be aware of where the pressure is coming from. We don’t live in a closed economy anymore. In Dallas, we have established a Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute. …We have more questions than we have answers. How do we get the right data? What’s the capacity utilization in the world at large? If you’re running at capacity, you’re going to have price pressures. I do expect that after the Olympics, by the way … inflationary forces will be increasing, not decreasing, in China. And I suspect we might feel the impact of that here. What are your views on the economic platforms of Barack Obama
