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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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monetarism
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The theory that control of the *money supply is the only means by which government should attempt to manage the economy. It assumes that market forces are the best natural regulators of economic activity, and it therefore goes back to the classical economics of David *Hume and Adam *Smith. A central purpose of controlling the money supply is the avoidance of *inflation, and Mrs Thatcher – coming to power at the end of Britain's most inflationary decade – was a passionate devotee of monetarism (the high priest of which has been the US economist Milton Friedman). For a while in the mid-1980s her personal guru on the subject was the American-based British economist Alan Walters (to the evident displeasure of her chancellor, Nigel Lawson). The chief opposing theory derives from *Keynes, who favoured government intervention to boost a flagging economy.
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