To lessen the blow, because the Euro is a monetary but not fiscal union, it needs countries that can afford a fiscal boost (particularly to consumption to drive imports from nearby affected countries) to give it everything to help the rest of the union.

Second, Japan must implement its recently announced fiscal boost.

Moreover, the failure of the massive Obama stimulus in America is a pretty clear example of how ineffective a Keynesian fiscal boost can be (producing anemic growth and doing nothing to prevent desperate unemployment).

Berlin has dragged its feet over the calls for a fiscal boost, sticking to orthodoxy despite a blizzard of dire data.

For this reason, they are reluctant to publicize the fact that they have already found a way to give the economy another fiscal boost in advance of next year's mid-terms without having to vote through a second big spending bill.

(By contrast, the biggest fiscal boost during the New Deal was about 1.5 per cent of G.D.P., which came in 1936.)

As Krugman and others have pointed out, a fiscal boost of this size was hardly commensurate with the depth of the recession.

EU plans for €200bn fiscal boost to head off recession have already begun to unravel.

Allowing for spending overruns, which are quite likely, the election-year fiscal boost could well come come close to three per cent of gross domestic product, which would make it one of the biggest yet seen.

The Western world's macroeconomic response to "sub-prime" - the virtual "money-printing" and massive fiscal boosts - has been a mistake of historic proportions.