Risk of Inflation in the next years?

This post is an attempt to gather what some (wealth management) professionals think about the risk of inflation in the coming years.

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Summary:

- Several see inflation as a high possibility: Warren Buffet, Jim Rogers, George Soros, Jeremy Grantham, David Einhorn.
- Some are not sure for now: Marc Faber, Mish.

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Warren Buffet, January 22, 2009, here:

You can’t just do one thing in economics. Any time somebody said I’m going to do this, you have to say and then what. And there is no free lunch. So if you pour money at this problem, you do have after effects. You create certain problems. I mean you are giving a medicine dosage to the patient on a scale that we haven’t seen in this country. And there will be after effects. And they can't be predicted exactly am but certainly, the potential is there for inflationary consequences that would be significant.

Marc Faber, January 9 2009, here seems uncertain:

the big question is we are in depression but is this depression is going to be inflationary or deflationary? In both cases the markets will not perform particularly well because in a deflationary depression all asset prices will continue to go down. In an inflationary depression interest rates will go up and so on the both assumption equity prices are not particularly inexpensive.

Jim Rogers, December 16, 2008, here:

we’re going to have gigantic amounts of government debt coming onto the market all over the world in the next year and inflation is going to be coming back in a big, big way

Jeremy Grantham, January, 2009, here:

For the long term, research should be directed into portfolios that would resist both inflationary problems and potential dollar weakness. These are the two serious problems that we may have to face as a consequence of flooding the global financial system with government bailouts and government debt…

Soros, January 19, 2009, here:

“If they are successful…the deflationary pressures will be replaced by the specter of inflation and the authorities will have to drain the excess money from the economy almost as quickly as they pumped it in. Of the two operations the second one is going to be, politically, even more difficult than the first,”

Mish, January 2009, here seems uncertain about a coming inflation, at least for now:

We have been in deflation for about a year, and maybe it lasts another, or five. Then again, perhaps we drift in and out of a slow growth recessionary period much like Japan for a decade. We have to take this one step at a time.

Bill Gross, November 2008, here:

the Fed will stay low for an extended period of time while the inevitable inflationary pressures of government bailouts lay further out on the yield curve.

and January 6th 2009, here:

I’d say you got to buy TIPS. You want inflation protection, and the value of TIPS is near historic. If this [government bailout] is successful, the economy will reflate…

David Einhorn, 20th January 2009, here, here:

The $5.1 billion hedge fund is buying gold for the first time amid the threat of inflation from increased government spending.
"Our current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, is an "inflationist" [...]
The size of the Fed’s balance sheet is exploding, and the currency is being debased.”