Oops

I came across this article (from 2006) profiling Bernanke (chairman of the US Federal Reserve). Robert Shiller could hardly have been more wrong:

Robert Schiller, a Yale economist and author of Irrational Exuberance, warns that Mr Bernanke's focus on the Great Depression has trained him to fight the wrong war.

The article also says:

The nub of his argument is that falling prices combine with debt to create a deadly cocktail. Central banks cannot cut rates below zero, so "real" interest rise as the economy slides deeper into deflation. Farmers defaulted en masse in 1933, toppling the banking system.
But there are other ways to counter deflation, Mr Bernanke explained with rather too much flourish as fresh Fed governor in 2003.
"The US government has a technology called a printing press that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost," he said.
Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters, he said. The speech earned him the epithet "Helicopter Ben" and perhaps a fatal notoriety as a inflationist, however unfairly.