So the Chancellor is going to start printing money again (though they now call it ‘quantative easing’). We have seen where this can lead before – hyper-inflation in Weimar Germany, in Hungary after World War One and in Zimbabwe now. It often leads to inflation, and it can reach the point where there is insufficient room on the banknote to accommodate the number of zeros required. You can go into a shop with money, spend nothing, yet the banknotes are valueless by the time you walk out the shop.

It is difficult to conceive of rampant hyper-inflation in the UK – past historical evidence is no guide to what happens in different countries in a different era. But we should not ignore the fact that the decision has been taken to try and refloat the economy on new money. What it betrays is the fact that Darling’s recapitalisation of the banks has not got credit flowing, that the VAT cut has not got people spending, and that the much-vaunted ‘fix’ from Gordon Brown is unravelling already. Darling said in his emergency budget that recovery would start this summer, now he and Gordon Brown are talking about a difficult year ahead. When they start talking about ‘years’ rather than just ‘year’ then perhaps we should get worried.

There is always the danger when you conflate “something must be done” with “anything must be done”. Yes, something must be done, but that something must be something worthwhile.

So here is just one micro-idea that I took away from David Cameron’s economic forum on Tuesday in Manchester. The type of people being made unemployed now are in white-collar jobs – not jobs that tend to be advertised in job centres. Government can, and should, take steps to encourage the growth of unofficial ‘job clubs’ that operate parallel to official JobCentres, and that are beginning to appear in some parts of the country. As someone who has found himself unemployed and ill-served by a JobCentre, a group of people in a similar situation are much better placed to exchange ideas and find solutions than a person behind a desk who is not used to placing someone with your skills. It is well known that the bulk of new jobs found are through contacts, family and friends. Don’t invest everything in JobCentres that are not matched to the people who will be using them.