such as business executives, wall street investment bankers/traders and those with significant investment and business holdings tend to be the first and primary beneficiaries of inflation because they first and foremost experience the impacts of the increased liquidity (i.e. money supply) in the system. For example, from mid 2006 to the end of 2008, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank dropped one of the key interest rates charged to major banks from 5.25% to 0.0%. During this time, most of the benchmark rates used by banks on personal and commercial loans did not decline by the same amount, so the banks automatically earned a higher ‘spread’ or profit margin on their loans without changing anything. Further, the banks had access to capital at an extremely low interest rate during a time when global stock markets had one of their best years ever. This meant the banks were able to borrow at an extremely low interest rate and invest in stocks and other investments that were rising in price very quickly, so they made a very high profit margin on this activity. This is why many major North American banks reported very high profit levels in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters of 2009. Effectively, the Federal Reserve Bank controls the cost of the banks’ primary input: money. No other industry has the cost of their primary input regulated like this by the government (although some industries have the cost of their products or outputs regulated by the government). In the last economic cycle (2003-2008), inflation didn’t really show up in the consumer price index (“CPI”) basket of goods, which is the primary measure of consumer inflation used by most governments. However, the inflation showed up in various other ways, including the increase in