The reports in today’s FT of confusion at the Fed concerning a rise in interest rates (‘Yellen pressed for clarity as Fed meets on rates’) and Martin Wolf’s customarily percipient comments on the fall in the natural rate of interest to zero or below prompt the thought that, given the continuing near-record levels of private debt and persistent low growth, there is an urgent need for a replay of the inflationary 1970s (and perhaps a rehabilitation of the Phillips Curve).