During the economic Crisis of the 1930s, I was, as a young man, an organiser of the National Unemployed Workers movement.
When I asked the Chancellor a question last week, he replied that it was not the crash but the actions of Government that had created the Crisis in the 1930s.
One of the key lessons of history is that the protectionist response to the global Crisis in the 1930s made mattersmuch worse - it led to a protectionist backlash.
When the world economy was plunged into a deep Crisis in the 1930s, the response, both nationally and internationally, was too little and too late.
During the Crisis of the 1930s, Keynes wrote to Roosevelt: "The turn of the tide in Great Britain is largely attributable to the reduction in the long-term rate of interest".
German insistence on fiscal discipline is, as Wolfgang Munchau made clear in yesterday's Financial Times, ideological and a deeply held response to the Crisis of the 1930s.