How low can you go?

Not much further judging by today's decision to cut interest rates down to 1.5%. And I'm not sure it will make much difference now anyway.
While the Bank of England normally sends rates up or down to control inflation, it has been bringing them down to the deck this time in the hope that it will encourage lending and spending.
But all the signs are that banks are, if anything, reining lending in even further. And the extra cash going back into people's pockets from lower mortgage payments isn't ending up in High Street cash tills.
Today's cut will make little difference to mortgage rates because banks are desperate to encourage people to put money into their coffers, not take it out. I suspect retail surveys for January will tell us that shoppers have padlocked their purses too.
But with the economy still in serious trouble, where do we go from here?
As I've said in previous blogs, there are two choices, both inter-linked. You'll see the phrase 'quantitative easing' bandied around increasingly in the coming days and weeks.
It means the Bank of England trying to overcome the lack of bank lending by printing more money and throwing it at the economy itself.
This leads to the second point. The money will be used to either buy the bad debts that continue to worry the banks and make them averse to lending, or to make selective investment in the economy, probably through a mechanism set up by Gordon brown and Alistair Darling.
This won't happen immediately, and the spectre it throws up of past economic and political crises means a Labour Government will be hugely sensitive about the way it's done.
This is why Mr Darling is strenuously denying he has any plans to do this - even though the Treasury and the Bank of England are known to have been talking about how it might happen.
Whatever the Government or the Bank does, interest rates are not where the action is anymore.