Hacker News Reader

> Oil shocks, interest rates at 15%. History rhymes.

Except the G-20 average public debt in the 70s was like 30% of the GDP.

We cannot go to interest rates at 15% with countries having 100%+ public debt (as is the case nearly everywhere in Europe for example).

View on HN

We’ll they can, but the trick is to not add new debt and pay the old debt with inflated dollars. Welcome to austerity 2.0

Good point. While the interest rates are “high” now (prime rate is 4.75?) that is actually a regression towards the mean, and definitely not 1970s hyperinflation territory.

I wonder though — given that we can’t go to that 15% rate (because then servicing public debt would be too expensive), what other tools do we have left to tame inflation?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com