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Notes -
I won't talk on why this caused a potential crash (it's to do with the policy causing a rapid change in the price of government bonds, and I don't really interact with bond markets in my day-to-day), but I can talk about the economic side of things.
The Econ 101 stuff here is that essentially in an anemic economic environment, governments are expected to stimulate demand via tax cuts or spending increases. This environment has been very easy on political parties of both sides, because it just requires borrowing more money (less concering in a low interest-rate environment) to fund your program of choice - or tax cut of choice.
For the last fifteen or so years, the paradigm has been 'we need more demand, right-wing governments cut taxes to try and get more, left-wing governments spend more'.
Now we're in the other side of the macroeconomic cycle - low unemployment and high inflation, and the last time we had inflation this high was around 1990. Governments I suspect simply do not have an institutional culture that tells them to cut back on spending, delay or cancel tax cuts, etc, in this situation. It's been too long.
I don't think the currency would've been worthless, but a good example of what this sort of decision-making would look elsewhen would've been a government drastically cutting spending a little ways in to the Global Financial Crisis and the recession that came with it. That sort of decision would've sent shocks into markets not just because it was a bad decision, but also because the bad decision showed an immense lack of judgement.
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