On the other hand, there are some pretty big deflationary forces (like, say, bad loans) at work here, so being /certain/ of inflation is probably a bad idea, but I can see why a person my worry that we might have inflation.
There is a way they could get inflation going: if the government prints money (i.e. not borrows printed money) and gives it away to people, e.g. by lowering taxes a lot. But they can't. And we all know they cant.
If we see significant deflation, the government /will/ take action to prevent it. What and how effective that action will be is anybody's guess... my understanding, though, was that Ben Bernanke has mentioned this ability to print money to avoid inflation before.
Anyhow... I'm not saying that we will see big inflation, just that it seems quite reasonable for a layman to see a /chance/ that we will have inflation at some point in the near future. hedging some against that chance, I think, is a rational thing to do.