In his recent letter to Legg Mason Value Trust investors, Manager and SfI Trustee Bill Miller singles out the work of an SFI External Professor in improving the economy.... "The weak dollar is another culprit in the commodity cycle. Oil began to rise in earnest when the dollar index broke down sharply in February. The Fed could help a lot by halting its interest rate cuts. Real short rates are now negative. It is not the price of credit that is the problem, it is its availability. If the Fed stopped cutting rates, that would help the dollar, which in turn ought to stall the commodity price rises, and thus also help the inflation picture. More technically, the Fed, in my opinion, needs to focus on the value of collateral and not on the price of credit. It appears they are beginning to do this, which is a very healthy sign. This is a topic for another letter, but anyone interested in it should consult the work of John Geanakoplos, a distinguished economics professor at Yale and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, who has written extensively on this issue, and presented to the Fed on it as well. He and Chairman Bernanke were grad students together at MIT."