Stagflation

We now have the worst of both worlds—not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of "stagflation" situation and history in modern terms is indeed being made. There is another point behind the figures. As I say, production has fallen by 1 per cent. or ½ per cent.

As soon as we understand how involuntary unemployment can result from rational and well-informed individual behavior, it also becomes obvious how inflation and unemployment—which we once thought could not occur simultaneously—can be combined, as they have been in the recent stagflation.

Since no one had the solutions to stagflation, [Jimmy] Carter, a fiscal conservative from the beginning, was thrown back to his personal bias and chose to elevate inflation to the nation's most pressing problem. […] More radical solutions to stagflation, such as direct wage and price controls or voluntary wage freezes to halt the wage/price spiral, were not thought to be socially acceptable. So, in the end the administration acquiesced to monetary stringency and watched its tenure recede.

Moving into the mid-1970s, America's economic performance suffered. Stagflation—inflation combined with minimal economic growth—eroded wages and profits, weakening business and consumer confidence.

The UK economy is suffering a nasty bout of stagflation and the prospects appear poor. That is the conclusion financial markets drew this week from yet more disappointing data, highlighting the weakness of the post-Covid economy and the persistence of high inflation.

Stagflation is a period of stagnant economic growth accompanied by persistently high inflation and a sharp rise in unemployment. While stagflation is quite rare—the U.S. has only experienced one sustained period of stagflation in recent history, in the 1970s—it’s become a more frequent topic of speculation. While it's unlikely that the U.S. economy is headed for another bout of stagflation, it's important to contextualize what's happening with the prominent episode of stagflation in the 1970s. […] Stagflation refers to an economy characterized by high inflation, low economic growth and high unemployment.

"[Donald Trump's tariff proposal] is a prescription for the mother of all stagflations,” Larry Summers, Treasury secretary during the [Bill] Clinton administration, told Bloomberg TV back in June.