It wasn't Colonel Mustard in the library with the candelabra. And contrary to recent press reports, it wasn't Prince Alwaleed in the desert with a cartel. It was, in fact, Dr. Bernanke in the temple with the printing press. And since Dr. Bernanke is, in effect, the dollar incarnate — the walking embodiment of the soundness of our currency — if the dollar does die, it will not have been murder. It will have been suicide.

Funeral services are already being held for the dollar, and to be fair, they are a bit premature. The dollar is not dead yet. It hasn't even reached the point of no return. Today it's in the ICU, and if the bleeding is staunched, it will pop right out of bed and begin traveling the world as it has in the past — bearing heavy burdens, storing value, and moving with great velocity into every nook and cranny of our lives.

The problem is the bleeding. Our government's excessive spending depends on a world that accepts our rivers of red ink. If and when the world does not, our central bank becomes the lender of last resort to our own government. And that means gushers of new money supply.

We've added roughly $1 trillion to the banking system across the financial crisis. And dollars are just like works of art: The more copies there are relative to demand, the less each one is worth. As with Monet, so with money — only Monet has remained scarce and valuable. As the U.S. money stock has continued to explode, the exchange value of the dollar has tumbled.

I've heard that the difference between a genuine suicide attempt and a "suicidal gesture" is in the cutting. If a man slashes deep into his wrists, he really means it, and if he merely scratches the surface, he's only crying out for help. In the case of Dr. Bernanke, the dollar incarnate, we might be witnessing yet another shade of suicide, the kind where the blade goes deep, but there's no recognition of the damage being done. Call it an absent-minded suicide, and call it lethal.

This article originally appeared on NationalReview.com.

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Then came an erroneous news report that he had died. Nobel had an experience that few ever get: he read his own obituary. It was harsh, referring to him as a merchant of death. Didn't they know what dynamite was mainly used for? Roads, bridges, tunnels. Dynamite brought people together when giant mountains of stone kept them apart. But that never was enough for the intellectuals, the journal people, Bertha's kind of people. Alfred Nobel, who had used his mind to create something of much greater value than all of the free-thinking playwrights and revolutionary poets, was unhappy. He wanted them to love him; he wanted her to love him. He wanted a glowing obituary.

His beloved Bertha, with whom he still corresponded long after their divorce, had an idea: Alfred could use his money to create a prize. People who work for peace, like Bertha's friends, would get money and acclaim for their efforts.

So he gave much of his fortune to the creation of a prize that would give money to exactly the type of people who had held him at arms length. He tried to buy their love. He tried to buy her love. He gave the authority to confer the prize to the government of Norway (which at the time was under the same crown as Sweden).

He got his glowing obituary. He didn't get the girl. The world got dynamite and was crisscrossed with train tracks and roads and bridges. Mountains became temporary impediments, rather than permanent dividers. The backs of millions of laborers were saved by this useful chemical compound. And yes, sometimes dynamite was used as a weapon.

But the prize has been used as a weapon, too. A Nobel to Carter, a Nobel to Gore, a Nobel to Obama. It appears that the parliament of Norway does not like George W. Bush very much. Carter was given a prize for negotiating a nuclear non-proliferation agreement with North Korea that was violated almost immediately. Gore's came just before his global warming hypothesis began to unravel among serious scientists and practically anyone else with a thermometer. Obama got one, well, just for being Obama. Or, more to the point, for not being Bush.

And let's not forget Arafat. Alfred Nobel tried to buy atonement from the intellectual world for the 'sin' of creating an explosive. But in 1994, in its finite wisdom, the Nobel committee bestowed his prize on the greatest recruiter of suicide bombers in history.

This article originally appeared on Townhall.com.

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