You can lead a horse to water . . .

A brief recap:

Damage to the economic system is causing leverage to fail. The prices of heavily leveraged assets (including house prices and the stock market are in danger of collapsing.

In order to stave off this collapse, central banks are using the usual techniques as well as some brand new ones to create more money in order to prop up these asset values and convince you and me that we are still well-off.

Unfortunately, large amounts of this money are being used to buy commodities, which is forcing their prices up. This makes you and me feel we are not so well-off, and this is bad from the central banks' perspective. The central bankers would like us to all buy bigger houses and invest in the stock market.

Notice that it is appearances that matters.

There has been much whining from central bankers about our complaints about food and energy prices (typical response--"shut up and buy and iPad2".)

All of this proves the old saying: You can lead a horse to water but you can't stop him from pissing in the pond."