[economist-student]

Paul Volcker, he can be also be credited with saving the US Dollar from collapse.

He raised interest rates while also diminishing money creation, although it was a hard recession, Volcker really saved the US Economy and the dollar from the malaise of the 70's.If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have had "low price inflation" during the late 80's and throughout the 90's.

[economist-student]

To break the price of oil, the best bet would be to raise interest rates so (15-30% a la Volcker) drastically as to encourage deflation. In one or two years the economy will be back in shape and based on sounder fundamentals (more manufacturing companies, and more savings)

Price deflation is going to come anyways, either in real terms or in nominal terms (a lot less likely, and I mean a LOT).

Here's a quote from Keynes on Inflation (the father of inflationist policies):

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity (or fairness) of the existing distribution of wealth. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."