Today’s economic news is not encouraging. The inventory recession may be mostly over - the destocking of shops and businesses that took such a toll over the past six months - but the mortgage, consumer credit and money supply numbers out today show us two big things.

First, the banks aren’t fixed, in the sense that they are lending to any but the safest bets. The banks are, to be sure, repairing margins and profits, which is in its way good news, especially for them and their shareholders (including the British taxpayer), but it is not so great for the economy as a whole if they are steering clear of small businesses and first time buyers. And the signals on the £100bn the Bank of England has now put into Quantitative Easing are mixed.

The Bank is able to point to some good news, and point out the other ways than via bank lending that it can help things along (eg by making yields on equities more attractive, so boosting that capital market; or via sales of sterling gilts that push down the pound and boost exports.

But the M4 numbers betray a pattern - the banks are, as we feared, sitting on the cash and no t lending it to those in the economy who most need it. The credit crisis is not over, and it will assuredly hold back recovery, maybe even pushing us into a further decline, though a gentler, slower one than we saw before.

Next year and in 2011 we will see a squeeze on public spending and a gradual rise in interest rates too. To sum it all up? Stagnation.