Every financial headline this week is running the same play. Oil prices are spiking on Middle East tensions, the usual suspects are invoking the ghost of 1973, and the word “stagflation” is getting thrown around like it’s been properly thought through. One CNBC headline put it plainly: $100-a-barrel oil and a prolonged Strait of Hormuz closure could spark a 1970s-style energy shock.
Maybe. But before anyone reaches for that comparison, it’s worth asking the question nobody in the mainstream actually asks: what did happen in the 1970s, mechanically, and is that mechanism present today?
It isn’t. And the implications of that are more unsettling than the 1970s story, not less.
So if this isn't 1973, what does history say it actually is…and why should that scare you a lot more than inflation?
