It's troubling to remember that President Nixon tried to put a leash on inflation in 1971 when prices were rising just over 4 percent. In 1970, the inflation rate had been above 6 percent. Nixon's 90-day freeze on prices and wages turned into three years of governmental controls that are widely regarded as a quixotic failure.

When Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment in 1974, new President Gerald Ford tried a new tactic for fighting inflation: He commissioned a song called "Whip Inflation Now" and passed out lapel pins with that message. WIN did even less than price controls to tame inflation. By December 1974, the consumer price index had soared to 12 percent, but American hadn't seen the worst yet.

An election-year drop in economic activity cooled inflation to under 6 percent two years later, paving the way for even higher inflation under President Jimmy Carter. The CPI peaked at 13.3 percent in 1979, setting the stage for Ronald Reagan's coining of the "misery index," derived by adding the inflation rate to the unemployment rate.

For the past 25 years, inflation has largely been under control. The CPI fell below 2 percent in 1986 and has not exceeded 4 percent since 1990. But it's headed upward now, and you might want to get used to it.

Here's what might lie ahead, based on my memories of trying to put bread on the table in the 1970s: That loaf of bread will cost a little bit more each time you go to the grocery store. Cuts of meat and commodities such as sugar and flour will suddenly jump in price without warning.

Gasoline you know about. It's more than a dollar a gallon higher than a year ago. It could get worse. I remember sitting in lines at gas stations and rationing systems based on the car's tag number. Gasoline jumped more than 50 percent (to around 50 cents a gallon) in 1974, then doubled to more than a dollar in 1979.

There are lots of reasons for this. A growing world economy is consuming more oil. A federal policy of subsidizing ethanol production is depleting both human and farm-animal food supplies worldwide. The Iraq War is being fought on credit, reducing the value of the American dollar. Washington has lost sight of fiscal responsibility (no one is running on a balanced budget platform this year), further deteriorating the dollar's value (it now takes $1.63 to match one euro).

Interest rates are low now as the Federal Reserve tries to bolster the economy, but that won't last. Expect interest rates to rise. The prime rate hit 21.5 percent in 1981, the same year I bought a house with a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage charging 14.75 percent (and you thought we had a mortgage crisis now!). It could have been worse. A savings-and-loan executive told me at the time that America would never again see single-digit mortgage rates. I believed him.

tarleton@wilsontimes.com | 265-7812