The making and unmaking of British ‘monetary Keynesianism’
Tuesday 25 March, 1.00pm-2:30 pm, 2025
Room 341, Level 3, Social Sciences Building (A02), University of Sydney
Speaker: Dr Sahil Dutta
For a generation that spanned from the depths of the interwar period to the birth of the postwar welfare state, British political economic policy was defined by Cheap Money. This involved the Bank of England and Treasury coordinating fiscal and monetary policy to lower long-term interest rates. This monetary experiment was short-lived, but its impacts were lasting, shifting the terrain for macroeconomic governance for the following two decades. Liquidity and credit greatly expanded and attempts at austere monetary policy were left ineffective. Successive governments and the Bank of England instead had to rely on direct regulations on banks and, increasingly, austere fiscal policy to manage the economy. The talk will explore how ‘monetary Keynesianism’ emerged and how its undoing left a legacy where fiscal policy came to be the heart of Britain’s faltering ‘Keynesian revolution’. By revisiting this period, a different light can be shed on the post 2008 re-emergence of Cheap Money and new lessons can be learned for fiscal-monetary coordination today.
Sahil Dutta is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at City, University of London. His research specialises in histories of neoliberalism, financialisaton and public sector reform.
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