cc @officialedballs.bsky.social @nickmacpherson.bsky.social @jonmdavis.bsky.social . The research is ongoing so feedback is welcome!

...the post and the research in it tell the story of how 1970s inflation in Britain was a fiscal phenomenon. The Treasury View was abandoned and fiscal imbalances were resolved through unexpected inflation ...

@strandgroup.bsky.social : you and your students may be interested in this post by Canadian economic historian Mike Bordo bsky.app/profile/voxe... ...

Strictly speaking the anniversary of the inflation print was 11 days ago. Oddly, the focus in the press at the time was not on the annual rate hitting 26.9% but the monthly rate easing....

This was a major contributor to the catastrophe of 1975, when inflation reached 27% on the measure used at the time

Healey inherited a difficult situation but failed to solve the underlying fiscal issues

the story came to a head after Barber's wildly stimulatory Budget in 1972 and the accompanying total absence of concern about the public finances

we tell the fiscal side of the story which has largely been neglected...but was seen as central at the time

Maybe if such a student exists he should write a post (??) about his work... I suspect he isn't very social media savvy (he probably needed to watch a video to work out how to reply to a blue sky message), but he might work it out in the end

This makes Schacht's infamous Mefo scheme look almost conservative - who would have thought?

That said, the new scheme might be the best available solution. But financial risks are 'yuge'.

Germany unification emitting strong vibes, too. That one didn't end v well.

Do you have any students who have written about the inflation risks associated with fiscal policy? 😉