The golden age of central banks is at an end – is it time for tax and spend?

The IMF appears fixed on interest rates and QE to boost the global economy but just as homeowners take on larger mortgages when rates are low, governments can also sustain higher deficits

Turn those machines back on. So demands the unscrupulous banker, Mortimer Duke, when he finds he and his brother Randolph have been ruined by their speculative scam in the film Trading Places. Having lost all his money betting wrongly on orange juice futures, Mortimer demands that trading be restarted so that he can win it back.

It's not known whether Christine Lagarde is a secret fan of John Landis movies. As a French citizen, Franiois Truffaut might be more her taste. There is, though, more than a hint of Trading Places about the advice being handed out by Lagarde's International Monetary Fund to global policymakers.

Related: A worried IMF is starting to scratch its head

Related: Europe must learn the lessons of the recent past | Jean-Claude Trichet