Jon Chait notes that we might be on the cusp of a revolution in the nation's monetary and fiscal policy. He lays out the history of inflation in the 1970s and how it shaped a generation of economists to fear inflation above all else. Trump's singular positive achievement might, in the end, be his appointment of Jerome Powell to chair the Fed.
I've always felt that any discussion of inflation in the '70s tends to neglect the impact of the various rolling energy shortages. Chait himself points to the "guns and butter" issue of Great Society spending and the Vietnam war budget overheating the economy. That certainly exerted inflationary pressure on the economy. However, the phenomenon of "stagflation" was a direct result of inflation caused by rising energy costs. Prices rose, because the cost of moving goods exploded with gas prices, but the overall economy didn't grow, because those increased costs were sent to Saudi Arabia or where burned in combustion engines.
There are a lot of reasons to invest in renewable energy, but economic health is usually not considered one of the main incentives. It should be.
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