SNELL: So, Scott, the last time inflation was this high, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Olivia Newton-John was everywhere on the radio, and the cool new computer was the Commodore 64, which was named after its 64 kilobytes of capacity. Oh, and a new soft drink was set to hit the market.
(Singing) Introducing Diet Coke, UNIDENTIFIED PERSON. You’ll drink it only for the sake of tasting it.
SNELL: Before Diet Coke, there was a period. And, while it feels like a long time ago, Scott, how close are we to having to go through it all again?
HORSLEY: Kelsey, you have to keep in mind that inflation was really decreasing in 1982. It had been significantly higher, nearly twice as high as it was in 1980, when annual inflation reached 14.6 percent…
HORSLEY:…Nearly twice as much as it is now. And inflation had been high for the greater part of a decade at the time. High inflation plagued Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. And by the time Reagan took office, Americans had grown accustomed to price increases that seemed to go on forever.
REAGAN, RONALD: Now we’ve had two years of double-digit inflation in a row: 13.3% in 1979 and 12.4 percent last year. This happened only once before, during World War I.
HORSLEY: So, in comparison to the inflation rates of the 1970s and early 1980s, today’s inflation rate doesn’t appear to be all that severe.
SO IT WAS COMING DOWN. SNELL: How did policymakers keep inflation under control back then?
HORSLEY: Well, the Federal Reserve provided some fairly unpleasant medication. Paul Volcker, then-Federal Reserve Chairman, was determined to break the back of inflation, and he was willing to raise interest rates to absurdly high levels to do it. To give you an example, mortgage rates reached 18 percent in 1981. As you may expect, that did not go down well. On the backs of wooden planks, enraged homebuilders wrote protest notes to Volcker. The Fed chairman, on the other hand, stuck to his guns. Volcker was interviewed on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”
PAUL VOLCKER: This dam is going to burst at some point, and the mentality is going to shift.
HORSLEY: Now, some people may believe we’re in for a rerun when they hear the Fed is prepared to hike interest rates once more to keep inflation in check.
HORSLEY: The rate rises we’re talking about now, though, are nothing like Volcker’s severe actions. Keep in mind that interest rates were near zero throughout the pandemic. Even if the Fed raised rates seven times this year, to 2% or something, as some experts currently predict, credit would still be extremely inexpensive by historical standards. The Fed isn’t talking about taking away the punchbowl, just substituting some of the extremely sugary punch with something closer to Diet Coke. The cheap money party has been going on for a long time, and the Fed isn’t talking about stopping it.
SNELL: (laughter) OK, so there are certainly some significant distinctions between today’s inflation and the inflation experienced by the United States in 1982. Is there, however, anything we can learn from that era?
HORSLEY: One thing to remember is that inflation is still a terrible experience. Rising prices have a significant impact on people’s perceptions of the economy, and politicians ignore this at their peril. The growing cost of rent, energy, and groceries – you know, the stuff that most of us can’t live without – were some of the major drivers of inflation last month. Abdul Ture, who works at a store outside of Washington, says his money doesn’t stretch as far as it used to, so he has to shop in smaller, more frequent increments.
ABDUL TURE: Oh no, the costs have increased. Everything has gone to hell on the inside. I now just buy a couple of items that I can utilize for two or three days. I used to be able to buy for a week. But no longer.
HORSLEY: This has an impact on people’s attitudes. Price gains are expected to ease throughout the course of the year, but inflation has already shown to be larger and more persistent than many analysts anticipated.
SNELL: However, a great deal has changed in the last 40 years. Take, for example, my cell phone. It has 100,000 times the memory of the Commodore computer we discussed earlier. Is this to say that inflation isn’t as dangerous as it once was?
HORSLEY: For the most part, it appeared as if the inflation dragon had been slain for the last few decades. Workers, for example, were assumed to have less negotiating leverage in a global economy, limiting their ability to demand greater compensation. Because the economy is no longer as reliant on oil as it was in the 1970s, oil shocks do not have the same impact. However, additional types of supply shocks occurred throughout the pandemic. And when you combine shortages of computer chips, truck drivers, and other personnel with extremely high demand, you’ve got a recipe for price increases.
SNELL: You should know that both Congress and the Federal Reserve injected trillions of dollars into the economy during the pandemic. It was an attempt to defuse the situation. So, how much of that contributed to the current level of inflation?
HORSLEY: That’s something economists will be debating for a long time. Those trillions of dollars did contribute to a fairly quick recovery. Unemployment has dropped from over 15% at the start of the pandemic to 4% presently. Could we have had a faster recovery without the huge inflationary consequences? Jason Furman, a former Obama administration economic adviser, believes that the $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress this spring went too far, even if it helped to speed up the recovery and put more people back to work.
FURMAN, JASON: I’d rather have high unemployment and low inflation than the other way around. I believe there were probably better options than either of those. I believe that if the stimulus package had been half as large, we would today have nearly the same amount of jobs and much lower inflation. Who knows, though.
HORSLEY: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was also questioned about whether the Fed went too far. He claims that historians will have to decide on the wisdom of the central bank’s policies in years to come. In retrospect, his cigar-chomping predecessor, Paul Volcker, looks a lot better. Look out if Powell shows up to his next press appearance with a cigar in his mouth.
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: Let’s get physical, let’s get physical, let’s get physical, let’s get physical, let’s get physical, let’s get physical, let’s get physical, let’ I’d like to engage in some physical activity. Let’s get down to business. Allow me to hear your body language, body language.
When did the United States’ inflation peak?
Between 1914 and 2022, the United States’ inflation rate averaged 3.25 percent, with a high of 23.70 percent in June 1920 and a low of -15.80 percent in June 1921.
What will be the rate of inflation in 2022?
According to a Bloomberg survey of experts, the average annual CPI is expected to grow 5.1 percent in 2022, up from 4.7 percent last year.
Who had the highest rate of inflation?
Jimmy Carter was president for four years, from 1977 to 1981, and when you look at the numbers, his presidency was uncommon. He achieved by far the highest GDP growth during his presidency, more than 1% higher than President Joe Biden. He did, however, have the highest inflation rate and the third-highest unemployment rate in the world. In terms of poverty rates, he is in the center of the pack.
Find: The Economic Impact of Stimulus and Increased Unemployment Payments in 2022
Has the United States ever experienced hyperinflation?
The trend of inflation in the rest of the world has been quite diverse, as seen in Figure 2, which illustrates inflation rates over the last several decades. Inflation rates were relatively high in many industrialized countries, not only the United States, in the 1970s. In 1975, for example, Japan’s inflation rate was over 8%, while the United Kingdom’s inflation rate was around 25%. Inflation rates in the United States and Europe fell in the 1980s and have mainly been stable since then.
In the 1970s, countries with tightly controlled economies, such as the Soviet Union and China, had historically low measured inflation rates because price increases were prohibited by law, except in circumstances where the government regarded a price increase to be due to quality improvements. These countries, on the other hand, were plagued by constant shortages of products, as prohibiting price increases works as a price limit, resulting in a situation in which demand much outnumbers supply. Although the statistics for these economies should be viewed as slightly shakier, Russia and China suffered outbursts of inflation as they transitioned toward more market-oriented economies. For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, China’s inflation rate was around 10% per year, however it has since declined. In the early 1990s, Russia suffered hyperinflationa period of extremely high inflationover 2,500 percent a year, yet by 2006, Russia’s consumer price inflation had dropped to 10% per year, as seen in Figure 3. The only time the United States came close to hyperinflation was in the Confederate states during the Civil War, from 1860 to 1865.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, many Latin American countries experienced rampant hyperinflation, with annual inflation rates typically exceeding 100%. In 1990, for example, inflation in both Brazil and Argentina surpassed 2000 percent. In the 1990s, several African countries had exceptionally high inflation rates, sometimes bordering on hyperinflation. In 1995, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, experienced a 75 percent inflation rate.
In most countries, the problem of inflation appeared to have subsided in the early 2000s, at least when compared to the worst periods of prior decades. As we mentioned in an earlier Bring it Home feature, the world’s worst example of hyperinflation in recent years was in Zimbabwe, where the government was issuing bills with a face value of $100 trillion (in Zimbabwean dollars) at one pointthat is, the bills had $100,000,000,000,000 written on the front but were nearly worthless. In many nations, double-digit, triple-digit, and even quadruple-digit inflation are still fresh in people’s minds.
Why was 1920’s inflation so high?
“I have no reason to believe there was an over-investment boom in the 1920s,” says the author.
Professor Milton Friedman, in an ongoing exchange of letters with me, urged Austrian school supporters to present proof of an overinvestment boom in the 1920s. He reaffirmed what he and Anna Schwartz found in A Monetary History of the United States: the 1920s were the “high tide” of Federal Reserve policy, with virtually no inflation and moderate economic development. Even monetarists deny that the stock market of 1929 was overvalued! In a nutshell, “everything in the 1920s was fine.” According to Friedman, the problem was not inflation in the 1920s, but rather the “Great Contraction” of the money supply in the 1930s, which drove the economy into the worst slump in US history.
The Austrians, in contrast to Friedman and the Monetarists, contend that the Federal Reserve artificially cheapened credit and staged an unsustainable inflationary bubble throughout the 1920s. As a result, the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing economic disaster were unavoidable.
The fact that Irving Fisher, the most prominent Monetarist of the 1920s, utterly missed the crash, whereas Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek foresaw it but did not name a specific date, is an intriguing historical footnote. Since then, Monetarists have claimed that the 1929-33 financial crisis was unforeseeable and that there were little, if any, warning signs of danger in the 1920s. The Austrians, on the other hand, have attempted to substantiate Mises-claim Hayek’s that the government induced an inflationary boom that could not persist, particularly under an international gold standard.
Was the 1920s a period of overinvestment? Which statistics you look at will determine the answer. The “macro” data supports the Monetarist argument, whereas the “micro” evidence backs up the Austrian position.
The broad-based pricing indexes, which support the Monetarists, indicate little or no inflation in the 1920s. Between 1921 and 1929, average wholesale and consumer prices barely changed. The majority of commodities prices dropped. “Far from being an inflationary decade, the twenties were the polar opposite,” Friedman and Schwartz conclude.
Other evidence, on the other hand, backs up the Austrian opinion that the decade was appropriately termed the Roaring Twenties. Although the 1920s were not marked by “price” inflation, they were marked by “profit” inflation, as John Maynard Keynes put it. Following the Great Depression of the 1920s, national output (GNP) expanded at a rate of 5.2 percent per year, well above the national average (3.0 percent). Between 1921 and 1929, the Index of Manufacturing Production rose at a significantly faster rate, nearly doubling. Capital investment and corporate earnings both increased.
In the United States, as in the 1980s, there was “asset” inflation. In the mid-1920s, there was a nationwide real estate boom, including a speculative bubble in Florida that burst in 1927. Manhattan, the world’s financial capital, saw a surge as well.
On Wall Street, both in stocks and bonds, the asset bubble was most pronounced. The Dow Jones Industrial Average began its colossal bull market in late 1921, at a cyclical low of 66, and went on to reach a high of 300 by mid-1929, more than tripling in value. Industrials were up 321 percent, Railroads were up 129 percent, and Utilities were up an unbelievable 318 percent, according to the Standard & Poor’s Index of Common Stocks.
Surprisingly, the Monetarists reject the existence of any stock market orgy. “Had high employment and economic growth continued, stock market valuations could have been sustained,” Anna Schwartz believes. It’s as if they’re trying to clear Irving Fisher’s name for announcing a week before the 1929 crash that “stock prices have hit what appears to be a permanently high peak.” (The crash wiped away Fisher’s massive leveraged position in Remington Rand stock.)
The thesis of Schwartz is predicated on what appear to be respectable price-earnings ratios for most firms in 1929. (15.6 versus a norm of 13.6). P/E ratios, on the other hand, are a notoriously deceptive measure of speculative activity. While they do rise during a bull market, they grossly underestimate the level of speculation because both prices and incomes rise during a boom. When yearly national output averages 5.2 percent and the S&P Index of Common Stocks rises an average of 18.6 percent each year during the 1920s, something has to give. In fact, the economy increased by only 6.3 percent between 1927 and 1929, whereas common stocks surged by an astonishing 82.2 percent! “Trees don’t grow to the sky,” as the old Wall Street adage goes. A collision was unavoidable.
The Austrians contend that the Federal Reserve’s “cheap-credit” strategy was to blame for the twenties’ structural imbalances, whilst the Monetarists deny that there was any serious inflationary purpose. Between 1921 and 1929, the money stock (M2) increased by 46 percent, or less than 5% a year, which Monetarists do not consider excessive. On the other hand, Austrians point to the Fed’s purposeful efforts to cut interest rates, particularly between 1924 and 1927, resulting in an unjustified boom in assets and manufacturing. More crucially, the expansion of credit in the United States far outpaced the growth of gold reserves, which would mean doom for the gold exchange standard.
In conclusion, was there an inflationary imbalance sufficient to produce an economic crisis in the 1920s? The evidence is mixed, but the Austrians have a strong case. The “cheap credit” stimulus may not have been substantial in the eyes of the Monetarists, but given the fragile nature of the financial system under the international gold standard, modest modifications by the newly constituted central bank provoked a gigantic worldwide earthquake.
What will the inflation rate be in 2021?
The United States’ annual inflation rate has risen from 3.2 percent in 2011 to 4.7 percent in 2021. This suggests that the dollar’s purchasing power has deteriorated in recent years.
Why is inflation in 2022 so high?
As the debate over inflation continues, it’s worth emphasizing a few key factors that policymakers should keep in mind as they consider what to do about the problem that arose last year.
- Even after accounting for fast growth in the last quarter of 2021, the claim that too-generous fiscal relief and recovery efforts played a big role in the 2021 acceleration of inflation by overheating the economy is unconvincing.
- Excessive inflation is being driven by the COVID-19 epidemic, which is causing demand and supply-side imbalances. COVID-19’s economic distortions are expected to become less harsh in 2022, easing inflation pressures.
- Concerns about inflation “It is misguided to believe that “expectations” among employees, households, and businesses will become ingrained and keep inflation high. What is more important than “The leverage that people and businesses have to safeguard their salaries from inflation is “expectations” of greater inflation. This leverage has been entirely one-sided for decades, with employees having no capacity to protect their salaries against pricing pressures. This one-sided leverage will reduce wage pressure in the coming months, lowering inflation.
- Inflation will not be slowed by moderate interest rate increases alone. The benefits of these hikes in persuading people and companies that policymakers are concerned about inflation must be balanced against the risks of reducing GDP.
Dean Baker recently published an excellent article summarizing the data on inflation and macroeconomic overheating. I’ll just add a few more points to his case. Rapid increase in gross domestic product (GDP) brought it 3.1 percent higher in the fourth quarter of 2021 than it had been in the fourth quarter of 2019. (the last quarter unaffected by COVID-19).
Shouldn’t this amount of GDP have put the economy’s ability to produce it without inflation under serious strain? Inflation was low (and continuing to reduce) in 2019. The supply side of the economy has been harmed since 2019, although it’s easy to exaggerate. While employment fell by 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter in 2019, total hours worked in the economy fell by only 0.7 percent (and Baker notes in his post that including growth in self-employed hours would reduce this to 0.4 percent ). While some of this is due to people working longer hours than they did prior to the pandemic, the majority of it is due to the fact that the jobs that have yet to return following the COVID-19 shock are low-hour jobs. Given that labor accounts for only roughly 60% of total inputs, a 0.4 percent drop in economy-side hours would only result in a 0.2 percent drop in output, all else being equal.
Why was inflation in the 1970s so high?
- Rapid inflation occurs when the prices of goods and services in an economy grow rapidly, reducing savings’ buying power.
- In the 1970s, the United States had some of the highest rates of inflation in recent history, with interest rates increasing to nearly 20%.
- This decade of high inflation was fueled by central bank policy, the removal of the gold window, Keynesian economic policies, and market psychology.
Is inflation likely to worsen?
If inflation stays at current levels, it will be determined by the path of the epidemic in the United States and overseas, the amount of further economic support (if any) provided by the government and the Federal Reserve, and how people evaluate future inflation prospects.
The cost and availability of inputs the stuff that businesses need to make their products and services is a major factor.
The lack of semiconductor chips, an important ingredient, has pushed up prices in the auto industry, much as rising lumber prices have pushed up construction expenses. Oil, another important input, has also been growing in price. However, for these inputs to have a long-term impact on inflation, prices would have to continue rising at the current rate.
As an economist who has spent decades analyzing macroeconomic events, I believe that this is unlikely to occur. For starters, oil prices have leveled out. For instance, while transportation costs are rising, they are not increasing as quickly as they have in the past.
As a result, inflation is expected to moderate in 2022, albeit it will remain higher than it was prior to the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal polled economists in early January, and they predicted that inflation will be around 3% in the coming year.
However, supply interruptions will continue to buffet the US (and the global economy) as long as surprises occur, such as China shutting down substantial sectors of its economy in pursuit of its COVID zero-tolerance policy or armed conflicts affecting oil supply.
We can’t blame any single institution or political party for inflation because there are so many contributing factors. Individuals and businesses were able to continue buying products and services as a result of the $4 trillion federal government spending during the Trump presidency, which helped to keep prices stable. At the same time, the Federal Reserve’s commitment to low interest rates and emergency financing protected the economy from collapsing, which would have resulted in even more precipitous price drops.
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed under Biden’s presidency adds to price pressures, although not nearly as much as energy price hikes, specific shortages, and labor supply decreases. The latter two have more to do with the pandemic than with specific measures.
Some claim that the government’s generous and increased unemployment insurance benefits restricted labor supply, causing businesses to bid up salaries and pass them on to consumers. However, there is no proof that this was the case, and in any case, those advantages have now expired and can no longer be blamed for ongoing inflation.
It’s also worth remembering that inflation is likely a necessary side effect of economic aid, which has helped keep Americans out of destitution and businesses afloat during a period of unprecedented hardship.
Inflation would have been lower if the economic recovery packages had not offered financial assistance to both workers and businesses, and if the Federal Reserve had not lowered interest rates and purchased US government debt. However, those decreased rates would have come at the expense of a slew of bankruptcies, increased unemployment, and severe economic suffering for families.