Two events this week have highlighted that, despite a stimulus of unprecedented proportions and scope, they cannot. The first was the additional austerity package announced by Greece under pressure from its European masters. To be tightening so severely into an ever-deepening contraction looks like economic madness, but the Greeks have no choice. And the second was the spectacle of Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, asserting his determination to “normalise” monetary conditions – while tacitly acknowledging the impossibility of even trying to do so, as long as the eurozone economy remains as stagnant as it is.