So this is all part of the notion that we don't want to just borrow and spend -- we also want to make stuff and sell. (Applause.) That's part one of the plan.

WHITEHOUSE: The White House

The Southern Strategy and Borrow and Spend Strategy however turned out to the self-limiting.

FORBES: Boehner Decides he Doesn't Want to Talk to the President After All

Louka Katseli, the development minister, thinks Greece should borrow and spend its way back to growth, with generous handouts to low-income families.

ECONOMIST: Greece's budget crisis

Yet, somehow, he and his fellow policy-makers at the Bank must convince the country, and the City, that more quantitative easing will meaningfully offset this gloom, and that further steps - like easing the liquidity requirements for banks, and the "funding for lending" scheme - will finally encourage banks to lend, and firms and households to borrow and spend.

BBC: Bank of England sets sail with QE3

Imaginative though the new plans are, they are based on the belief that you can persuade the private sector to borrow and spend more in the current environment, even when everyone's natural instinct -including, apparently, Mr Osborne's - is to conserve cash and get control of their debts.

BBC: Bank and Treasury's plan A-plus for UK

Nevertheless the illusion of new-found wealth has caused households as a whole to save less and spend and borrow more.

ECONOMIST: The dragon and the eagle | The