Over the Easter weekend, the financial press has been full of signs that the US recovery is taking hold on an increasingly broad base. I do not doubt that this is true: the country does, after all, have most of its output in the private sector, and that sector has lavish natural resources available to it.

Neither of these truths apply in the UK, where there are none of the signs cheering up the Americans. Further, while in the UK we are up to speed with a mere 30% of the toxic banking debt still to come, in the US (where the Government may have a softer voice than here, but it wields a bigger stick)they know about nigh on 80% of the bad banking news.

But whichever side of The Pond you inhabit, the same principle applies: economic recession is a short-term nuisance, but fiscal debt is a long-term nightmare.

There is a tendency in the commercial commentariat(as with weather fluctuations and climate change in the ecological debate) to confuse economic growth with fiscal repayment. The problem isn’t helped by the tone of hyper-optimistic hysteria with which every green shoot is greeted: to read Bloomberg, Reuters and the FT during the last few days, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US is Microsoft. In fact, it is British Steel circa 1976.

Britain itself, unfortunately, is Woolworths around 2006: nobody has any idea any more what it’s for or what it sells, and the receivers lie in wait for the day when nobody shops there any more…or external events take a turn for the worse.

I am still at a loss to understand why no Tory political broadcasts or ads have tried to hammer home the fact that paying off debt comes first. The New Labour and knee-jerk Keynesian nonsense about ‘not endangering the recovery’ is exactly that. First, there is no recovery to protect; and second, even if there was, racking up unrepayable debt is far more serious than cutting down the household expenses for a while. In the former instance you lose the house, and in the latter a few pounds in weight.