Commodity prices are a monetary phenomenon. The price of oil keeps going up. Yet Ben Bernanke still won't do anything serious to strengthen the dollar. Again and again I and many others have been warning for month after month that "Stagflation could make its ugly face obvious as early as this summer." Now it is just about here. And it's the fault of the Fed and the Treasury, along with a political class that keeps approving huge spending while failing to ensure that current low tax rates will remain low. And now things are getting really awful. Since Ben Bernanke and the Fed refused last week to back up Bernanke's "strong dollar" talk, from a few weeks earlier, with any actual discernible action, the stock market has tanked even further, horrendously so, while oil and gold have jumped even more. Bernanke is incompetent. Bush can't fire him, but he should ask for the Fed Chief's resignation, in favor of somebody who will actually protect the dollar.