He now says that the government might do more beyond the fiscal stimulus set to take full effect in May, should conditions warrant.

ECONOMIST: The Fed flexes its monetary muscle

"Michael's return is further stimulus within our set-up, " added Domenicali.

BBC: Ferrari out to beat Michael Schumacher and Mercedes

In December 2008, with the world's economy sagging, she summoned senior German businessmen to discuss a set of stimulus measures, including subsidies for retaining staff on shorter hours rather than laying them off.

ECONOMIST: German business and politics

So too should the relaxation in fiscal policy which started with President Bush's tax rebates this summer and which seem set to continue with a substantial stimulus package now working its way through Congress.

ECONOMIST: The Fed keeps cutting

In the past 18 months, the IMF has repeatedly said that the government might need to consider fiscal stimulus if "downside risks materialised" and the economy looked set for a prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment.

BBC: IMF: 'Great policies - shame about the economy'

In the debate over the direction, size, and scope of government spending, another recent mud-flinging debate has been set aside: the argument over the effectiveness of the stimulus.

FORBES: Government Spending is Our Only Friend; We Need to Make New Ones

Recovery.gov, which tracks stimulus spending, is hosted at the affected datacenter, but was not affected because is was set up to move to another location in the event of an outage.

FORBES: Will Amazon Outage Stop GovCloud?