Dr Charles Read (Faculty of History and Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge) The Irish famine and the financial crises of 1847 and 2022: lessons from history for modern-day policymakers Friday 25th November 2pm
Coffee Break Seminars are a relaxed online learning and discussion platform for our food security community. Talks take place every Friday during term time at 2 pm, UK time.
Zoom link to join the seminar can be found here.
Please find more on this series here.
A budget that caused markets to panic because of unfunded tax cuts and a plan to massively increase government borrowing. Interest rates and government bond yields soared. A run on the pound began. The Bank of England is forced to intervene to save financial markets from meltdown and the government's fiscal capacity shrinks. In response, the government U-turns, and announces and implements an austerity budget to balance its books to placate investors in the City of London.
You might think that this is talking about the recent Autumn Statement and the aftermath of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget of September 2022. In fact, all this also happened in the equally disastrous budget of February 1847 when the British government announced plans to cut tariffs and pay for Irish-famine relief spending from borrowing. The austerity cuts the government thought were needed to balance the books and regain fiscal credibility with markets saw spending on Irish-famine relief slashed throughout the rest of 1847. This cut in funding resulted in an inadequate relief effort in Ireland, killing up to one million people.
This talk will explain the similarities between the policy choices facing politicians in Britain and Ireland in the 1840s and around the world today. It will discuss what lessons can be learned from the policy mistakes made during the financial crises of 1847 and 2022 and how to prevent such events in the future from harming the food security of the most vulnerable in society.