By Sir Alan Budd, a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee.
"Last November, I celebrated my retirement from the Treasury. It therefore seems appropriate for me to devote this talk to reminiscence. I want to talk about three Budgets and use them to illustrate changing approaches to macroeconomic policy. They are the Budgets of 1972, 1981 and 1992. I was directly involved, as a Treasury official, in two of them and took a particular interest in the other one. I should say now that I am not intending to reveal confidential information about the operation of the Treasury. (It is well-known that such efforts are immediately punished by a bolt of lightning, and I would not wish to cause any injury to innocent bystanders.)"
Three views of macroeconomics