WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Reserve is not responsible for the collapse of governments in North Africa, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.

Don’t laugh. There are some people who have actually blamed Bernanke and the Fed for the revolutionary fervor in Egypt and Tunisia. Although, it’s hard to know if CNBC talking head and National Review columnist Larry Kudlow means to be taken seriously when he says people are dying in Cairo because of U.S. monetary policy.

What’s their argument? Kudlow says that low interest rates in the United States are pushing commodity prices higher around the world. Higher food and fuel prices have contributed to the anti-government protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Therefore, there’s blood on Bernanke’s hands. Read Larry Kudlow’s column here.

As much as he might like to take credit for the march of democracy, Bernanke wouldn’t do it when he was asked about it on Thursday. He said higher prices reflect strong global demand for commodities due to high growth rates in the emerging economies, not to anything the Fed is doing.

“The most important development globally is that the world is growing more quickly, particularly in emerging markets,” he said. The U.S. economy is not overheating, and has not significantly increased its demand for petroleum, wheat, cotton or other commodities. Read our complete coverage of Bernanke’s speech at the National Press Club.

Moreover, Bernanke said that if emerging markets want to fight domestic inflation, they should use their own monetary policy tools, or revalue their currencies. “It’s really up to emerging markets to find appropriate tools to balance their own growth.”.

Kudlow and other critics of the Fed are confused. They think that because many commodities are priced in U.S. dollars that means that any price movements can be traced back to U.S. policies. But the fact that oil and other commodities are priced in dollars is irrelevant in a world of floating exchange rates.

Just because it costs more dollars to buy a barrel of oil or a bushel of wheat doesn’t mean that it will also cost more euros, or Egyptian pounds, or Chinese yuan to buy that barrel or bushel. It’s the exchange rate that matters, not the level of the federal funds rate.

Bernanke 1, Kudlow 0.

— Rex Nutting