Others fear the Fed's decision could ignite inflation down the road.
The most serious threat, though, is that we re-ignite inflation.
Productivity increases allow the economy to grow faster without igniting inflation.
Unemployment in the late 1990s eventually dropped to 4% in the US, without igniting inflation.
There is considerable debate among economists about how fast the economy can grow without igniting inflation.
Gold, he said, is a logical hedge against this risk, because firing up the printing presses ignites inflation.
The effect was to reduce the level of unemployment at which strong growth would ignite inflation, he said.
That helped raise the value of the dollar against other currencies, which made imports cheap without igniting inflation.
At his urging, the Bank of Japan has adopted a policy of "quantitative easing"—creating money to buy bonds, in the hope of igniting inflation.
FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged on Thursday but signaled that it could raise it pre-emptively if generous wage deals threatened to ignite inflation.
