Go back to the headlines in 2010 – – “Countries with debt over 90 percent of GDP enter a danger zone”. The 90 per cent threshold entered the media coverage as a result of a paper released by Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart – Growth in a Time of Debt. That paper talked about “debt intolerance limits” arising from “sharply rising interest rates” – and then “painful fiscal adjustments” and “outright default”. It also talked about the “obvious connection” between inflation and high public debt ratios – which had me laughing at the time because no-one has really shown that to be a robust relationship at all. Everyone started quoting the paper, even though at the time it had obvious flaws. The predictions failed to materialise as did all the previous predictions that economists like them had failed. But the press keeps giving their views a public platform because the lurid predictions attract audiences. It is a pity because lame politicians seem to regard the predictions as being based in fact and change policies for the worse. Anyway, Rogoff is back in town predicting that the British government will run out of sterling and be forced to bring in the IMF to address the fiscal crisis. That is what the headlines say. But if you delve more deeply, his position is a little different and exposes the chicanery of mainstream economics which holds itself out as a consistent body of theory but regularly uses that pretence to bully governments into political shifts that help the elites and damage the rest of us.