During the 1980s, dramatic changes in the federal budget, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury initiated the most comprehensive series of economic experiments since the 1930s. This book describes the nature of those experiments and compares them to the Keynesian experiment of the 1960s. In the 1980s, monetarists claimed their policies would permanently subdue inflation and unemployment; supply-siders said their tax cuts would give the economy new life with accelerated growth and a balanced budget; and free floaters promised unprecedented stability in international markets. Actual...

During the 1980s, dramatic changes in the federal budget, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury initiated the most comprehensive series of economic experiments since the 1930s. This book describes the nature of those experiments and compares them to the Keynesian experiment of the 1960s. The promises that the economic experimenters made in the 1980s were bold and confident: monetarists claimed their policies would permanently subdue inflation and unemployment; supply-siders said their tax cuts would give the economy new life with accelerated growth and a balanced budget; and free...