SantaCruz...
It's all a matter of degree, if you believe Bernanke, and to some extent that makes sense. Bernanke did not advocate monetizing all of Japan's debt - he suggested that they should do a tax cut (sound familiar??) and then monetize the cost of that tax cut to where there was in effect no impact on the deficit. He also suggested that other things could selectively monetized to aid the struggle against deflation. While he acknowledged that doing so presented inflationary pressures on the economy, he opined that with Japan deeply in deflation, some inflationary pressures (including a weakening Yen) would be welcome.
A weaker Yen has been official Japanese government policy for a long time now, but just as inflation weakens a currency, deflation tends to strengthen it and Japan has had trouble holding the Yen down even with very concerted intervention in the currency markets, largely targeted against the $USD by selling Yen to buy $USD. This puts the monetary goals of Japan and the US directly at odds, with both desiring to see their currency weaken - an easy goal for the US because of the low savings rate and very high current accounts deficit. The opposite is true for Japan, so holding the Yen down has been very difficult even with the very poor economy there.
This is a problem that will be with us for a long time, I think, as Japan and the US will be joined by the Brits and Euroland all engaging in competitive devaluation, each trying to lower the value of their currency to help their struggling economies.
I personally think the winner will be gold.
mlsoft
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