Oh, the joys of a bona fide command economy. Loan growth, the aim of pump-priming governments everywhere, is running at an annual rate of almost 25 per cent in China. Banks made $280bn of new loans in March alone. In the eurozone, by contrast, credit is shrinking.

Clearly, when Beijing cracks the whip its big, state-controlled banks respond, although monetary forces have also been at work. As interest rate cuts have shrunk the availability of decent-yielding securities, banks may have concluded that short-term corporate lending was a better way to earn a turn. Then March threw up more convincing data. Term credit rose, while three- to six-month commercial paper fell to perhaps a 10th of bank lending, compared with over 30 cent in the months before.