Recently I wrote, "I am reading almost equal numbers of urgent deflationists and urgent inflationists which suggests to me more of this churning action we now have lies ahead this month and into next month." What I noticed about these articles was that almost all of them were written by people who were either selling something or defending their market position, also known as "talking their book".
In commodities and gold this is a very common feature. Most of the loudest inflation and hyperinflation proponents own gold mines or commodity fund management companies or write newsletters for a living. Among the deflation predictors there are also many newsletter writers and bond experts or managers. Naturally there are media propagandists and politicians on both sides as well. In fact the first question to get a quick answer to in a "'flation debate" presentation is "what is this person selling?"
Another group--and I'm embarrassed to say I have sometimes fallen into it up to hip boot depths--hyperventilates about inflation or deflation out a sense of anxiety about what the credit crash actually means. There are very few people now living who were investors from 1929-1933, so we have no personal experience, good or bad, for such events as we have just lived through. Even if we are economists, and I'm not, we know that economists are generally wrong about the major moves such as recessions and booms and much else.
Given my longstanding interest in gold and my 20% asset commitment to various gold investments, half of which is the metal itself, I have read scores of analysts, mostly pro-inflation but not all. So I have read a lot about Roy Jastram's major book, the Golden Constant, first published in the 1970's and now just updated and republished. I have read about Gibson's Paradox and the man, Lawrence Summers, who will likely replace Bernanke next year, and much monetary history. With the news leading up to the announcement late last year that Jastram's Golden Constant would be updated and republished, there have been a number of articles written about Jastram's views on gold, most of them quite short or commercial-political. The best of the articles on Jastram is from 2005, "Gold and Deflation: A Dissenting Dissection" by Bob Landis. http://www.goldensextant.com/ This article strongly makes the point that gold, according to Jastram and the author, Bob Landis, does very well indeed during deflation.
At the same site click on "library" and then click on the last item "Roy W. Jastram, Remarks to the Security Analysts Society of San Francisco (December 2, 1981)". This is an excellent summary of Jastram's work and conclusions including his charts of English gold and commodity prices and the purchasing power of gold from 1560 to 1977 and in the US from 1800 to 1977. 
I have a copy of the new Jastram edition on order. I'll be very interested to see what Jill Leyland, formerly of the World Gold Council, will have to say about gold from 1977 to 2008.
In any event we appear to have compelling arguments that gold holds its purchasing value over long periods of time regardless of inflation or deflation. I remind you of this chart I have shown on the blog several times before of cash, gold, TBills, TBonds, and stocks from 1800 to 2002 showing that cash has gone nearly to zero while gold has held its value. 
Also very well worth reading on the 'flation debate is Paul Kasriel's "Greater Risk over Next Five Years – Inflation or Deflation?" of June 1, 2009. Kasriel is one of the few economists I really respect, mainly because he's usually correct. In this article he presents his forecast based upon three variables he has found to be predictive of inflation levels.
Last, another chart shows the projection for US CPI by the Financial Forecast Center, updated Friday. Their website is http://www.forecasts.org and their projection, based upon a rules-based artificial intelligence system, is quite similar to Kasriel's call for moderately elevated inflation (3-4% annually) over the next three years.
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