Wish I’d said that! Earlier this week,Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica, writing onThe Times’s DealBook blog, comparedpeople who keep predicting runawayinflation to “true believers whose faith in apredicted apocalypse persists even after itfails to materialize.” Indeed.

Economic forecasters are often wrong. Me, too! If an economist never makes anincorrect prediction, he or she isn’t takingenough risks. But it’s less common for supposed experts to keep making the same wrong prediction year after year,never admitting or trying to explain their past errors. And the remarkable thing isthat these always-wrong, never-in-doubtpundits continue to have large public andpolitical influence.

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. But as regularreaders know, I’ve been trying to figureit out, because I think it’s important tounderstand the persistence and power ofthe inflation cult.

Whom are we talking about? Not just theshouting heads on CNBC, although they’recertainly part of it. Rick Santelli, famous for his 2009 Tea Party rant, also spent much of that year yelling that runaway inflation was coming. It wasn’t, but hisline never changed. Just two months ago,he told viewers that the Federal Reserve is“preparing for hyperinflation.”

You might dismiss the likes of Mr. Santelli, saying that they’re basically in the entertainment business. But manyinvestors didn’t get that memo. I’ve hadmoney managers — that is, professionalinvestors — tell me that the quiescence ofinflation surprised them, because “all theexperts” predicted that it would surge.

And it’s not as easy to dismiss thephenomenon of obsessive attachmentto a failed economic doctrine when yousee it in major political figures. In 2009,Representative Paul Ryan warned about“inf lation’s looming shadow.” Did hereconsider when inflation stayed low? No,he kept warning, year after year, about thecoming “debasement” of the dollar.

Wait, there’s more: You find the sameGroundhog Day story when you look at thepronouncements of seemingly reputableeconomists. In May 2009, Allan Meltzer,a well-known monetary economist and historian of the Federal Reserve, had an Op-Ed article published in The Times warning that a sharp rise in inflation was imminent unless the Fed changed course.

Over the next five years, Mr. Meltzer’s preferred measure of prices rose at an annual rate of only 1.6 percent, and his response was published in another op-ed article, this time in The Wall Street Journal. The title? “How the Fed Fuels the Coming Inflation.”

So what’s going on here?

I’ve written before about how the wealthy tend to oppose easy money,perceiving it as being against the irinterests. But that doesn’t explain the broadappeal of prophets whose prophecies keepfailing.

Part of that appeal is clearly political;there’s a reason why Mr. Santelli yellsabout both inflation and how PresidentObama is giving money away to “losers,”why M r. Rya n wa r ns about bot h adebased currency and a government thatredistributes from “makers” to “takers.”Inf lation cultists almost always linkthe Fed’s policies to complaints aboutgovernment spending. They’re completelywrong about the details — no, the Fed isn’tprinting money to cover the budget deficit— but it’s true that governments whosedebt is denominated in a currency they canissue have more fiscal flexibility, and hencemore ability to maintain aid to those inneed, than governments that don’t.

And anger against “takers” — anger that is very much tied up with ethnic and cultural divisions — runs deep. Many people, therefore, feel an affinity with those who rant about looming inflation; Mr. Santelli is their kind of guy. In an importantsense, I’d argue, the persistence of theinflation cult is an example of the “affinityfraud” crucial to many swindles, in whichinvestors trust a con man because he seemsto be part of their tribe. In this case, the conmen may be conning themselves as well astheir followers, but that hardly matters.

This tribal interpretation of the inflation cult helps explain the sheer rage you encounter when pointing out that the promised hyperinflation is nowhere to be seen. It’s comparable to the reaction you get when pointing out that Obamacare seems to be working, and probably has the same roots.

But what about the economists who go along with the cult? They’re all conservatives, but aren’t they also professionals who put evidence above political convenience? Apparently not.

The persistence of the inflation cult is,therefore, an indicator of just how polarized our society has become, of how everything is political, even among those who are supposed to rise above such things. And that reality, unlike the supposed risk of runaway inflation, is something that should scare you.