How to Fight Inflation without Setting Off a Debt Bomb and Tanking the Economy

The late Paul Volcker (1927–2019), who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987 has often been mythologized as the man who “broke the back of inflation” in the early 1980s. Often not considered is what this actually meant in human terms: the most severe recession of the post — World War II period, a total loss of 1.3 million jobs, including a whopping 1.1 million manufacturing jobs, contributing to the deindustrialization of the U.S., the devastation of once great manufacturing cities like Detroit and Flint, Michigan and 10s of 1,000s of small businesses…