Extreme inflation is not around the corner whenever there is a budget deficit. Democracy makes hard moves harder. Political change toward a more participatory democracy has not favored price stability. Because democratic institutions do not make hard choices easy, democratic countries have almost invariably implemented special procedures to adopt and implement the hard measures needed for stabilization. The abhorrence of inflation's destructiveness may nevertheless allow stern measures that had been considered politically impossible but that are needed to rebuild confidence and stability.
Fiscal austerity is inevitable.
But the desire to stabilize prices and bring budgets closer to balance does not imply that zero inflation must be achieved at any cost. Some countries use policies that accept a moderate rate of inflation because there is a steeply rising cost of disinflation. Inflation control thus has limits, discussed in the next section. One is that inflation is integral to a country's public finance. The other is that inflation is allowed to persist because it is too hard or too costly to stop.