Extreme Economics – What monetarism meant for Britain, with ex-Thatcher’s advisor Tim Lankester

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

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News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Say “monetarism” to anyone who was around in the early 80s and watch the chill run down their spine. Margaret Thatcher tried to conquer inflation by using a fringe economic credo of slashing the money supply. The result was a collapsed economy and unemployment on a colossal scale. What was monetarism? Did it work, even in its own terms? And where are its echoes today? Tim Lankester – then the PM’s private secretary for economic affairs, now author of Inside Thatcher’s Monetarism Experiment – takes Andrew Harrison back to an age of scorched earth economics. • “She set out to get inflation down, but it didn’t work out well at all. There was a massive deflation of the economy and unemployment almost doubled.” – Sir Tim Lankester • “Manufacturing suffered enormously. Output went down by almost 20%. These were pretty bad years for the economy.” – Sir Tim Lankester Buy Inside Thatcher’s Monetarism Experiment through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund The Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. Written and presented by Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Simon Williams. Produced by Eliza Davis-Beard. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Art by Jim Perrett. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. The Bunker is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:14.3	politics I'm Andrew Harrison. Monetorism it's a term that sends a shiver of
1:19.5	cold recognition down your spine if you're old enough to remember it.
1:23.0	Redland of the early 80s and the early days of Margaret Thatcher's reign.
1:26.5	Redland of mass unemployment of industrial disquiet and cuts in public services
1:31.0	and a new harshness in government where abstract economic ideas could
1:35.0	change entire communities forever. It's still a scare term to the left. It was
1:39.8	even denounced on the back of an album by Paul Weller's style council, although they blamed
1:44.4	somebody called Raymond Keynes for it. But what was monetarism? What did it mean and what aspects of it
1:49.6	are we still living with? Economists Sir Tim Lancaster was Margaret Thatcher's private secretary for economic affairs
	...

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