Inflation is back in the news, with the most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading more than double the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target. In light of May's 4.2 percent CPI reading, it may be practical to consider the ideas of a Nobel economist who spent a year teaching at the University of Arkansas and how they became better known to a broader public.

Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992) taught at Fayetteville (1949-50), later co-winning the 1974 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Hayek was featured with his contemporary, John Maynard Keynes, in the 2002 PBS documentary "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy."

Accepting the prize, Hayek noted the irony that "economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists........

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