It was Milton Friedman who attacked the central Keynesian idea that consumption is the key to economic recovery as trying to "spend your way out of a recession." Unlike Keynes, Friedman believed that government spending and racking up debt eventually leads to inflation—a rise in prices that lessens the value of money and wages—which can be disastrous unless accompanied by underlying economic growth. The stagflation of the 1970s was a case in point: It was paradoxically a period with high unemployment and low production, but also high inflation and high-interest rates.