So here we are, back in our hole, and the preferred way out, wished on us by advisers and committees, is to get the banks to lend more money. The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, even talks in terms of setting up a business bank — just the place for the other banks to unload their shakier customers. There are limits to any business's ability to get by on borrowed money. To survive and to thrive it will need capital. 

Cable should reflect that Keynes and Lord Macmillan were right all those years ago.

It is time now for the Vince and Mervyn Show — for a new entity, sponsored as before by the Bank of England, to take up the work for which ICFC was designed. As before, it would get out to its customers and know its markets. As before, it would be no soft touch. It would not need to be. Bridge that gap!