Unconventional measures that leave us all with a mess to clear up

It is quite hard to get one's head around it all. If anyone had said last summer, when base rates were 5 per cent, that they would be down to 0.5 per cent it would have seemed mad. But it would also have seemed beyond all reason that the annual increase in the retail price index, which reached 5 per cent then, should now be near zero and will almost certainly soon go negative.

If that is hard, the idea of the Bank of England doing the Zimbabwe option of "printing money" would have seemed shocking – and that this decision should be met with general acclaim, well, let's not think about that just yet.

Last summer the economy still was cantering on. House prices were falling fast but share prices were quite resilient, consumption was still rising, overall economic activity was close to its all-time peak and the pound was still riding high. Actually the economy was about to head over a cliff but it did not feel like it – just as the Warner Brothers' Wile E. Coyote would head over a cliff (as the Roadrunner screeched to a halt just in time), carry on in mid-air, and only fall to the ground when he looked down and saw there was nothing below.