I was going to write about the so-called fiscal cliff today and would have shown that the only thing that might fall of the said cliff would be real GDP growth should the US Congress actually not extend the tax cuts and impose the spending cuts. The US economy would follow the lead from the British economy and double-dip in 2013 as sure as day follows night (or is it the other way round). The most elementary exposition of what we might call – ECO101 Macroeconomics – would tell us that. One person’s spending is another person’s income and so on. I note that some economists are arguing that ECO101 Macroeconomics is alive and well because it has had a an impeccable record in the current crisis. In my recent blogs – Fiscal austerity damages real growth and prolongs the financial downturn and Neo-liberalism has failed but we still don’t get it – I have argued that the mainstream of my profession has failed – both in anticipating the emerging crisis and providing credible solutions to remedy it. So have I overstated that claim, given that ECO101 Macroeconomics is the go-to approach at present? The problem is that while there are some leading economists who are arguing against harsh fiscal austerity at present at the basis of their reasoning is a thoroughly mainstream approach which has helped create the problem. I don’t think their version of ECO101 Macroeconomics provides the answers. There is some common ground with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) but an even deeper incongruence.