Money was extremely tight, e.g., I had to put down 30% to buy a house. My mortgage rate was about 14%. Unemployment was very high, and inflation was high teens, as I recall.
Tony, it is hard to get data about others, but inflation was about 3% (had come down from 6%) as evidenced by the following article excerpt about Business Week and Fortune magazine in Jan 1973 :
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The stock market should go higher still because "prosperity is almost certain to continue," reports Business Week. Fortune says it's "hard to imagine a combination of circumstances that would entirely undo the good work of the past few years, which halved the inflation rate from roughly 6% three years ago to about 3% now."
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Btw, the 3month T-Bill and the long bond were both yielding around 5% to 5.5% at that time, so if you got a mortgage at 14%, it was probably some years later, not in early 1973. |
