For those of us who were at Cambridge during the great Monetarist v Keynesian debates of the early 1980s, it is good to see the old man’s ideas making a political comeback. It is just a shame that he is not around himself to tell us exactly how to get out of this storm we find ourselves in.

What is clear is that the decisive action taken so far by the government and the Bank of England will not be enough. We will need further concerted macroeconomic moves across the Group of 20 nations and interest rates in the UK much closer to US levels to break through the famous Keynesian “liquidity trap”, where consumers and banks alike hang on to cash rather than spend and lend.