The Economic Debate The 1970s in the West saw the emergence into policy of a debate which had been continuous but which was largely conducted amongst intellectuals and policymakers. This was the battle between the Keynesians who had defined the ‘post-war settlement’ and Monetarists who were focussed upon inflation. The consequences of this battle were to be quite serious, and pushed economics and political economy towards a kind of market-based, anti-inflation position which prevailed across the world with few exceptions by 1987-91. The basic disagreement was between those who believed that Aggregate Demand drove the economy, and that the worst problem in a real economy was unemployment, and those who believed that all policy eventually came down to how sound and trusted the money supply of a country was and could be. The former group argued that governments should spend against the economic cycle, that deficits were not a bad thing, and that the economy could be stimulated fis