Friedman helicopter lands in London, stretches my dollar

Today the Bank of England, as authorised by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, announced that it was infusing another £50 billion into the British economy as part of its "quantitative easing" scheme to get Britain spending again. This brings the total up to £175 million flowing out of the City of London. With the release, however, that figure promptly went from US$297.5 million to US$294 million, as more liquidity in the economy means less value and thus more inflation.

Or as the bank's hoping to do, no deflation. And the bank seems to have its way with preventing deflation, with house prices up just over 1 percent and forecasters revising their year-end house sales projections from a decline of 10 percent to a modest rise, but still a decline in 2010.

I'm not an economist, but with major figures appearing to bottom out, I sense that we just might be at the end of the beginning of the global recession. And that might be putting it cautious.