Kevin Phillips, author of "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism", has been quoted repeatedly as saying that the current misguided responses of the Federal government (both under President Bush and President Obama), combined with a commodities cycle that began early in the decade and is being masked by the recession will combine to return us to inflation levels last seen in the mid-seventies.
The above article is worth reading, and Mr. Phillips is refreshingly direct in his language.