Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is an acclaimed

economist, best known for a thesis which is looking increasingly out of sync with current thinking.

A decade ago, Ken Rogoff, professor of public policy at Harvard and former chief economist at the

IMF, suggested that any country with a national

debt of more than 90% of GDP would see its growth prospects materially and significantly compromised.

While other economists challenged his analysis, a host of governments across the Western world

were heavily influenced by his thinking.

Well, fast forward to today, and the prevailing winds in economics are blowing in a very different

direction. President Biden is spending trillions of dollars to rebuild the post-COVID U.S. economy.

Other Western governments are similarly splashing the cash and

piling up new debt. Suddenly, big government, as the driver of economic growth, is back in fashion.

And all those fears about the dangers of debt, inflation and economic instability, well, seemingly they've been tamed, or have they?

Has COVID changed the rules of global economics? Well, Ken Rogoff joins me from Cambridge,

Massachusetts now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you. At several points over the last year, you've described what has happened

to the global economy as a result of the pandemic as an unfolding catastrophe. Given what we see

today, do you think you were a little bit too pessimistic? Well, indeed, particularly the vaccines

have been able to come out faster and been more

effective than all the public health experts were telling us. So that's really been what's turned

things around more than anything. No, I hadn't predicted it, but it's not good enough,

but it's better than what we'd hoped.

The IMF has just issued its latest up sum of where the global economy is, and they've

upgraded their global growth forecast from, I think, around 5.5% to 6%, which is a pretty

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