ECB calls for fiscal discipline. You listening, Gordon?

Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank, has said, in an interview with the FT today, that fiscal rules must be kept. He warned that fiscal indiscipline could undermine already fragile economic confidence and said it was not the time to tear up the rule book.

Are you listening Gordon?

As our Dear Leader, "Saviour of the World," is keen to talk about co-ordinated action and European unity, one might think he could be so persuaded by Trichet's words that he decides to resurrect his own fiscal rules from the dead, dust them off, and put them into practice.

But that isn't going to happen because Brown and Darling think fiscal rules are "perverse" - especially as fiscal discipline would prevent Brown from "doing something" and appearing as our decisive, man of action (or 'Superman' if you're Harriet Harman), irrespective of the fact that his fiscal stimulus is going to achieve exactly squat, other than add to our already huge levels of debt.