This is a very strange Brad Delong piece
BERKELEY – Neville Chamberlain is remembered today as the British prime minister who, as an avatar of appeasement of Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s, helped to usher Europe into World War II. But, earlier in that fateful decade, relatively soon after the start of the Great Depression, the British economy was rapidly returning to its previous level of output, thanks to Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain’s reliance on fiscal stimulus to restore the price level to its pre-depression trajectory.
What?
Our Neville became Chancellor in 1931.
Whereupon he got us off the gold standard and cut government expenditure.
It was a couple of years later, when the currency devaluation thing had done its stuff that he started to expand spending again.
I\’ve not got the numbers for the deficit or national debt in those years. But the idea that Our Nev did \”fiscal expansion\” in 31, 32, seems very strange indeed. Anyone know?