Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has put himself on a collision course with Downing Street over its plans for reducing the Treasury's "extraordinary" deficits once recession is over.
Earlier this year, Congress had extraordinary difficulty passing the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which cut the budget by only $40 billion over five years.
You might say it is an imperfect democracy, but with the crisis one has to recognise that there is an extraordinary sensation of democratic deficit," said a European source.
Chancellor George Osborne said omitting the deficit was "extraordinary".
The anti-deficit lobby has had extraordinary success, though, in making the deficit the top item on the Washington agenda.
It is extraordinary that average public deficits have fallen from around 6% of GDP to 3% in just four years and that average inflation today is at a historical low of 2.2%.
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But it is too late for that now, with a budget deficit of an extraordinary 11-12% of GDP popping up in many forecasts for next year.
"We are confronted with a situation where the scale of deficits is truly extraordinary.
Inconvenient facts are brushed aside, which may account for the administration's extraordinary indifference to the ballooning budget deficit.
