Just give people the money. Give them cash, dole it out, increase benefits, slash VAT, hand it to those most likely to spend it: the poor. Put £1,000 into every debit account. Whatever you do, don’t give it to banks. They will just hoard it or use it to boost house prices.

Britain is suffering from a classic liquidity trap. There is insufficient demand. Yet all the Bank of England did on Thursday was wring its hands, blame Brexit and go on digging the same old holes.

They are labelled lower interest rates, quantitative easing and more cash for banks. Those policies have been in place for some seven years. They have failed, failed, failed. Not one commentator yesterday thought cutting interest rates to 0.25% would make any difference to the threat of recession.

Worse, by cutting annuity yields it would impoverish many old people who would otherwise spend. The Bank’s cumbersome monetary bureaucracy was set up to keep inflation under control by curbing bank lending. That failed during the credit crunch. Now it is failing in the opposite direction. Channelling policy through the banks has proved useless in protecting the economy from deflation and recession.

The Bank is trapped intellectually in the world in which it lives, that of the City and the banking system. Like chateau generals at the Somme, it never ventures to the economy’s frontline, where buyers meet sellers and generate growth. It thinks of bonds, investments and the only glamour spending it recognises, on infrastructure. It believes that an economy can be regenerated through middle-class home ownership and state mega-projects. But there is no shortage of funds to invest. Companies, like banks, are awash in cash. The problem is that savers are not spending; if they spend on anything it is on property, and that, too, may now slide.

It is irresponsible to await the chancellor’s autumn statement and a political fiddle with tax rates. The engine of the economy must crash into forward gear. Money must be got into bank accounts, cash cards, shops tills and revenues. The plea from 35 economists published in the Guardian this week for “unconventional measures” made only one mistake. It suggested more spending on state infrastructure, which is just spending delayed. Where the economists were right was in suggesting “an immediate increase in household disposable incomes”. They joined the growing chorus calling for “helicopter money”. In the present climate, there is not the slightest risk of inflation – the traditional hazard of monetary expansion: £1,000 “printed” and moved from the Bank into every household account would still cost less (at £30bn) than Hinkley Point or HS2. There could be a “spending Olympics”. There could be vouchers, scrappage schemes, Christmas bonuses and, horror of horrors, cash for the undeserving poor. Why not try it? All else has failed.