US Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum won all three republican voting contests last night. Let's just remind our viewers what some of his thoughts are regarding foreign policy and Iran...remember what he said on the campaign trail about nuclear scientists ending up dead being a good thing? He's also advocated airstrikes on nuclear facilities. As we hear the drum beat of war between the West and Iran, we often see war and politics as separate from the economy. They are not. Putting aside the human cost for a moment, which is huge, let's look at the economic cost. The price of economic sanctions, and any conflict for energy...what effect will it have on prices for the basic things that we need, like oil? What effect will this have on an economy already muddling through the dirt? Will countries resort to even more resource wars as a result, and will these lead to currency wars? Well, we have the man that wrote the book on this, James Rickards, in studio with us to talk about just that. He made the rounds on Capitol Hill today, and before heading to the Lion's den, the US Treasury tomorrow, he is here to give us the inside scoop. And speaking of the hill, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, has been making the rounds himself lately, as he often does. He has been telling lawmakers that he doesn't want higher inflation, and that the Fed's dual mandate should not be confused with a dovish stance on inflation. But do the fed's policies belie those words? To borrow from Jim Rickards, is Bernanke the Lawrence Welk of our time, conducting Fed policy with help from the same bag of tricks...his bubble machine? And really, what does the inflation have to do with unemployment? We learn in economics that the phillips curve works, but does it really, or is it a broken model that economists still use to escape the hardships of living in the real world? We will ask James Rickards what he thinks of this as well.
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