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The government has a policy for reducing inflation. It wants to make everybody poorer, except of course the banks. That is what its economic brain tells it to do. It is a version of John Major’s refrain in 1989: “If it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working”. But its political brain cries out for something more congenial. So it assembles a package of measures designed to ease the pain caused by high interest rates, especially that felt by home owners with large mortgages.