  Anisotropic inflationary background geometries are analyzed in the context of
an extended gauge action where the electric and magnetic susceptibilities are
not bound to coincide and depend on the inflaton field. After deriving various
classes of solutions with electric and magnetic hairs, we discuss the problem
of the initial boundary conditions of the shear parameter and consider a
globally neutral plasma as a possible relic of a preinflationary stage of
expansion. While electric hairs are washed out by the finite value of the
protoinflationary conductivity, magnetic hairs can persist and introduce a tiny
amount of shear causing a different inflationary rate of expansion along
orthogonal spatial directions. The plasma interactions are a necessary
criterion to discriminate between physical and unphysical initial conditions
but they are not strictly sufficient to warrant the stability of a given
magnetic solution.
