It is good to see two senior members of the central banking community – Jaime Caruana, general manager of the BIS, and Masaaki Shirakawa, governor of the Bank of Japan – warning in quite forthright terms about the limits of monetary easing.

Most central bankers are aware of the dangers of relying excessively on monetary policy to combat recession and the ongoing financial crisis, but few are willing to speak out in such plain terms. It was fitting that both Caruana and Shirakawa were speaking at