Strange sight commuting this morning: A guy was reading Forbes and unfolded, I kid you not, what appeared for all the world to be a centerfold. We were facing each other, so I couldn’t see who was in the centerfold, but I’m guessing it was Warren Buffett lounging on a large pile of C-notes.

On a more serious note, though, Steve Forbes has some pearls of worldly wisdom in his latest column:

Phony ProblemOne reason the Fed is feeding inflation is that it thinks it’s grappling with a conundrum: Inflation is rising, and the economy is weakening. How can our central bank stimulate the economy without risking even more inflation? Rotten ideas never seem to die. The Fed’s notion that it must choose between economic growth and inflation is absolutely false. Experience has repeatedly shown that there is no tradeoff between inflation and a vigorous economy. We can have both excellent growth and a stable currency.A couple of examples among many: The U.S. in the 1980s had the second-largest economic expansion in its history, yet inflation plummeted from 13% to 3%. The 1990s had the largest, with a long, energetic period of growth and little inflation. Switzerland repeatedly demonstrates that you can have the best of both worlds. The Fed finds itself with an inflation crisis because of its own blunders, namely printing too much money in 2004–05 and again now. The Fed should mop up the excess liquidity–success with this would see gold, the best measure of monetary excess, drop from $900-plus an ounce to less than $500.

And what is this story headlined? “Jimmy Carter Bush.” Ouch!