[volare737]

Inflation was never 17% in 1979. The peak was about 11%.

[NorthMountain]

Chart of monthly USA inflation rates, going back to 1914.

Chart of monthly average 15 and 30 year mortgage interest rates.

[curious7]

It appears you are correct about the 17% inflation rate (though the interest rate on some loans were in that ballpark (or higher) during that ‘Carter Malaise’ period), but the peak was higher than 11% for some years from some datasets.

Depending on the dataset used for the years 1973 - 1980 the inflation rate for each year is reported to be:

1973: 8.7% (or 8.8% per some datasets)
1974: 12.3% (or 9.39% per some datasets)
1975: 6.9% (or 11.80% per some datasets)
1976: 4.9% (or 6.72% per some datasets)
1977: 6.7% (or 5.22% per some datasets)
1978: 9.0% (or 6.84% per some datasets)
1979: 13.3% (or 9.28% per some datasets)
1980: 12.5% (or 13.91% per some datasets)

[Fai Mao]

“Inflation was never 17% in 1979. The peak was about 11%.”

Governments lie to protect themselves. It was higher than 11% and was closer to 20%. Just like under Biden.