If not now, then surely sometime soon? Undeterred by now widespread bewilderment over how Quantitative Easing (QE) is meant to work in reviving the economy, or even whether it works at all, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC (KOSDAQ: 050540.KQ - news) ) is about to order another £50bn to £75bn bout of it.
It could be at the end of the MPC's monthly meeting on Thursday, it might be next month, but with the economy again very likely back in some sort of technical recession, few doubt that the next lorry load is on the way.
The last two deliveries have already been exhausted. Appearances alone demand that the Bank must do more still, even though it has already bought up more than a third of the entire UK market in conventional gilts. On the current policy trajectory, it won't stop until it has bought the lot.
And little good does it appear to be doing. Now it may well be that without the money printing, things would be even worse. It's always impossible to know the counter factual. All the same, QE has proved something of a disappointment. It's not providing the support policy-makers hoped for. Why is it that the UK economy isn't responding?
The Prime Minister and his Chancellor blame it on the "chilling" effect of the eurozone crisis, and maybe there is a bit of that. Yet if so, it's odd that some European economies, including the mighty Germany, are continuing to grow relatively well. The euro crisis is not of itself an explanation.
Britain's performance isn't as bad as the eurozone periphery, but we appear more in that camp than the central Europeans, who you would expect as members of the euro to be rather worse affected than us if the single currency was the main source of the mischief. So if not the euro, is it possible that Labour was right all along and it's too much austerity?
In the last week or so, two major think-tanks have switched to this view. Both the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research have urged the Government to change tack and provide fresh fiscal stimulus.
Would that it was that simple. The evidence for undue austerity being the cause is as limited as for the euro. In fact, the Government is still spending at record levels; the cuts have not yet properly kicked in.
To the contrary, government spending contributed positively to growth in every quarter of last year, including the last one, when the economy as a whole shrunk.
Spending cuts are only one part of the fiscal squeeze. Most of it so far has been in the form of tax increases, which have reduced disposable incomes, squeezing consumption.
Even so, it's not clear tax cuts would significantly boost demand in the current environment. Much more likely is that the fiscal giveaway would merely be saved. Public debt would rise further, and household debt would fall, but there would be little if any boost to aggregate demand.
So if not austerity or the eurozone, maybe it's just the snow, the Royal Wedding, Olympic ticket sales or whatever other implausible explanation the ONS is prone to come up with.
In fact, the real cause is much closer to home; it's too much debt - too much public debt, too much household debt and too much banking debt. Until this is reduced to more manageable levels, the economy isn't going to grow very much.
This has long been the view held by Fathom, the economic consultancy, and they've been proved largely right. Once an economy becomes over-leveraged, it takes a long time to get back to more realistic levels of debt. In the meantime, demand will be quite severely impaired.
The point is certainly arguable, but I would suggest the reason why the US is beginning to show distinct signs of economic revival, while the UK is not, has very little to do with the larger and more prolonged nature of the US's fiscal stimulus. Rather it is because the US has adopted a more brutal approach to deleveraging.
According to a recent McKinsey report, household debt has already been reduced by 15pc, as growing numbers of households throw in the keys and default, and it's been even more marked in the financial sector.
In Britain, by contrast, barely a start has been made on reducing household indebtedness, while public debts have been growing like topsy. The banking system is making better progress, but this has proved damaging for the real economy, for it means that there is less credit for enterprise and consumption.
The bottom line is that the US has been better at unwinding the excesses of the property and consumption boom than the UK and Europe (Chicago Options: ^REURUSD - news) , and is now reaping the rewards.
QE, in its British form at least, has not really helped in this regard, while for great tracts of the population the net savers it has been a total disaster because it has induced a negative real interest rate. Pity those forced to buy an annuity right now. They've been well and truly stuffed.
QE may have smoothed, and to some extent, mitigated the economic adjustment, but it has also probably prolonged it. The price we have paid for a less calamitous rise in unemployment is a longer depression and a more sustained squeeze on living standards. That's why, more than three years after the recession began, it feels as if we are still in it.
If the Bank of England is to do more QE, it should follow the European Central Bank's lead and apply it to the bits of the economy most in need of liquidity business and mortgage lending.
The final word must go to Andrew Sentance, formerly a member of the Bank's MPC and a panellist at Fathom's quarterly Monetary Policy Forum this week. The world has changed, he points out. The old growth model based around rising levels of consumption and house prices has gone. It will take a while for a new one to emerge.
Policy-makers have struggled to cope with these changed circumstances. Attempting to revive the old world, the thrust of current monetary policy, may be the wrong response.
Instead, radical supply-side reform is called for, particularly in the tax system, where a complete overhaul along the lines suggested by the Mirrlees Review is required one that incentives equity over debt, investment over consumption, and removes the very high and growth stifling marginal rates which have crept into income and some forms of value added tax.
Will the Government do it? Don't hold your breath.
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