Well said, Governor!

With Chancellor Darling saying nothing and Chancellor Brown lying through his teeth, it's about time that someone with responsibility for the economy said something about the parlous situation we are in.

Steps in Mervyn King! He described the size of the UK budget deficit as "truly extraordinary" and explained it in words that Cameron or Osborne could have used, - "..we came into this crisis with fiscal policy along a path that wasn't in itself sustainable, and a correction was needed."

There was a warning, that "..we need to recognise that although we are finding it easy to now to finance those deficits by issuing gilts, there could be challenges down the road."

It was partly coded, but the gist is clear, that we entered the recession with large deficits and we cannot go on trying to spend our way out by borrowing more and more.

A quarter of all our spending, including interest on the debt, is financed by borrowing. It's not difficult to see why our AAA credit rating is being watched. We cannot go on, for broke, in the way we have been. This way leads to disaster.

The Governor's careful statement that the government needs to have a slightly greater ambition to bring borrowing down is a masterful understatement.