Ben Bernanke should hold the line against the inflation hawks on the Fed’s board.

With unemployment jumping from 5% in April to 5.5% in May, the biggest leap in 22 years, now is no time to raise interest rates.

The unemployment rate is likely to get worse even without an interest rate increase, as large employers from Continental to GM have announced huge layoffs, which will ripple through the economy.

But if the Fed hikes interest rates, joblessness could go to double digits.

Raising rates would make it more expensive for companies to obtain loans, so they would find it harder to stay in business and would have to lay more people off.

Raising rates would also make it more expensive for people to buy homes, and the housing market, the epicenter of our current economic morass, would only get worse.

Yet there was Bernanke earlier this week saying he was ready to defend the falling dollar and to ward off inflation. The typical way to do that is to raise interest rates.

But the risk of inflation being induced by low interest rates is not great right now, as Bernanke’s former colleague at Princeton, Paul Krugman, argued persuasively in the New York Times recently.

Bernanke has gone to great lengths to keep the economy from collapsing so far, and he has acted creatively in doing so.

The worst thing he could do now is act conventionally and bow to the bankers by adopting the disastrous view that he must raise interest rates.

Shortening the unemployment lines is much more important than that.