The clear danger signs are here that the temporary stimulus provided by the huge growth in government expenditure is already beginning to peter out. As one would expect from the huge force of debt arrayed against the thieves. They have plucked the goose so much that it is now spitting feathers.
The banking problems caused by debt have not been addressed: nationalise and then leave them to work out their own bad debts. The amount of lending in the country continues to dry up and it is feared that inflation will rise due to quantitative easing:
A continuing drought in bank lending, evidenced in the latest figures from the Bank of England, and the threat that spiralling public borrowing will feed through to higher interest rates and inflation, are judged by international economists to be mortal dangers to a sustained recovery.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which comprises the 30 most advanced economies in the world, added to the gloom, saying that Britain remained "deep" in recession and faced a "bleak short-term outlook".
"The recovery is likely to be slow and unemployment is expected to climb significantly," it said, adding that the Treasury could do "considerably more" to fix the public finances.
From a short-term perspective, politicians have confused short-term stopgaps with solutions, especially where the electoral cycle is causing deceit to be used as a hiding place for these problems. Such is the charge from David Cameron as dishonesty in dire times results in a levy on Labour's polls:
Mr Brown is likely to be dealt a further blow today when official figures show that the economy has shrunk even more than thought this year. The Office for National Statistics is expected to revise its figure for the drop in GDP in the first three months of the year to 4.4 per cent.
Meanwhile, a ComRes survey for The Independent will show that only one in five people trust Labour to decide where spending cuts should be made, compared with 31 per cent for the Conservatives.
As the current equilibrium is unsustainable, we may see either a crisis or a change in circumstances that demand public expenditure cuts before the election. Does Brown think he will be lucky enough to stave off this threat?