As the new Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, made his first public appearance at a relatively minor Nottinghamshire meeting of business people, it is now becoming clear that he has embarked on a new course to his predecessor, Lord (Mervyn) King.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, although Lord King can be said to have had a good crisis; the roadmap Mr Carney is leading us down, forward guidance, is new, different and interesting.
But his emphasis on maintaining a low-interest environment, though welcomed, has a down side: savers are going to be the ones who suffer as a result and the demographic of savers is the older and retired person – the babyboomers.
These are the very people who are moving to protect their life-savings by investing in buy-to-lets, quite often in urban areas and university towns.
There is an unintended stoking of the simmering intergenerational conflict that we have already seen played out in Southern Europe and in the Arab Spring of two years ago.
Mr Carney’s message was reassuringly comforting, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Policy is not based on hope, nor indeed wishful thinking, but on solid empirical evidence.
The jury is still out on Mr Carney.
