When it relaunched the policy last year, it did so with the scale, political support and rhetorical commitment needed to jolt the country out of its deflationary expectations.
But it could also be that shock treatment is just what's needed to jolt some outmoded art forms back to life.
To win Republican votes, the final stimulus package is considerably leaner than what many economists say is now needed to jolt the economy, given its grave condition.
Sometimes just a thorough watering with a generous dose of house plant fertilizer may be all that's needed to jolt them.
For now, at least, the bank remains unwilling or unable to wield the more powerful weapons that many economists say are needed to jolt the Continent out of recession.
In 2011 Paul Krugman joked that the threat of alien invasion might loosen government purse strings, prompting the sort of deficit-spending needed to jolt rich economies out of their slumps.
President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, meeting as part of a regularly scheduled economic conference, said the spending was needed to jolt the European economy out of its doldrums.
What's remarkable about this particular career evolution is that Surrealism's founder, André Breton, argued that shock tactics were needed to jolt jaded adults back to an awareness of the marvelous — a wide-eyed receptivity to life that he believed children possessed in spades.
The Threepenny Opera, a tale of low-life treachery and despair from 1920s Berlin which took its cue from the seedy world of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, really needs to jolt the audience from their seats to mean anything at all.
For Japanese voters, coming to grips with difficult economic choices may be what is needed to jolt their nation out of ongoing stagnation.
