Putin spoke a lot on Thursday about sanctions and the weak rouble acting as a stimulus for local businesses; that Russian products would now become more competitive.
Rather ingeniously he equated such demands with Labour's call for stimulus spending.
Not in any year of the budget forward estimates is there a forecast to cut government spending in real terms which is unlike the post-crash period when, after the stimulus measures, government spending fell in real terms in 2010-11 and 2012-13.
The Federal Reserve is set to end its economic stimulus program in October, bringing to an end the controversial five-year-old scheme even as officials said there were signs that the US economy was still in trouble.
Only last November, when Alistair Darling was unveiling his package of VAT cuts and extra public spending in his pre-budget report, the spin from the Treasury and 10 Downing Street was that this fiscal stimulus would be quite enough, thank you, to support the economy.
Well, yes, times do change, the economic situation has got steadily worse, and a new stimulus would indeed be a good idea if there were any money available to pay for it.
Draghi unveiled a mouse of a further monetary stimulus on Thursday.
But I do believe that, in their time and in their way, faith was a comfort and a consolation as well as a stimulus to create buildings of supreme beauty.
In other words, by ending QE, the Fed is not filling up the financial hole left by its stimulus.
Who now believes that "light regulation" will encourage banks to contribute to the general good, or that the profit motive – as illustrated by the collapse of Southern Cross – is the best stimulus to high-quality domiciliary care?
Yellen declined to give any specifics about whether or not the Fed would slow the pace of cuts it is making to its now $65bn-a-month 65bn-a-month 65bn-a-monthstimulus program.
