My Green new Deal colleague Larry Elliott has saved me the need to write about the latest round of interest rate cuts. Writing in the Guardian he has said:

To cut short-term rates, central banks simply do what the Bank did yesterday: they announce a new level. Manipulating long-term rates is a much more complicated business, but Keynes said one answer was for central banks to buy up long-dated government bonds, thereby driving down long-term interest rates and boosting investment. Bernanke is giving it a try, and on past form it will arrive here sometime in the spring. If even that doesn't end the credit crunch, the next step will be policymakers forcing banks to lend, and credit controls to prevent the extra investment being blown on speculation. Radical? You bet. But so was the idea that by late 2008 a fair chunk of the US and UK banking sectors would be in state hands.

That's a pretty good summary of where I think we are.

But I still worry that the Treasury doesn't really understand Keynes well enough to appreciate this as yet. They haven't got long to learn - and they have also to appreciate that this is real Keynes - net Keynesian economics. They're different.