Britain's fortunes rest on the Bank's great money-printing machine The power of the Bank of England lies in that money-printing machine, which has so far produced an almighty £375 billion. This makes it, by some margin, the most important part of British economic policy - yet it is never mentioned in the Budget, and seldom in Parliament. Even so, the effect of this money printing has been to decimate interest rates, the consequences of which are not properly scrutinised because the Bank is supposedly independent. Even Ed Balls doesn't argue about it. There is a dangerous consensus at Westminster: that, if quantitative easing is the answer, it must have been a very long and boring question. At one stage, it seemed as if Osborne might preside over a far worse crash: one involving mass bankruptcies, boarded-up shops, mortgage defaults and soaring unemployment. This didn't happen because "monetary activism" kept the cheap debt flowing. A nation addicted to credit in the boom was prescribed monetary methadone in the bust. The printing presses kept rolling, the debt rates stayed low - and homeowners found, to their amazement, that the mortgage rate dropped below the level of inflation. If there are no bank robberies in Britain, it's because nowadays you don't need a gun. The bank will pay you to borrow. Osborne sometimes talks as if this is a Horn of Plenty, and wonders who to share the cheap debt with. Are you a company, refused credit by your bank? Then the Treasury has a scheme for you. Or a young couple, trying to buy a house for £600,000 but can't find a bank willing to lend? Then the Chancellor has a fund to underwrite your debt: not so much a right to buy, but a right to default. In this era of austerity, cheap debt is being hosed around as if it came from a second North Sea strike. Which, to Osborne, it is: lower rates have now saved him twice as much as he receives from the entire offshore industry. But there is a side-effect. This deluge of cheap money, reinforced recently by the Funding for Lending scheme, has decimated savers. Normally, at this time of year, people try to apply for an ISA before the April 5 cut-off date. Now, the rates are derisory. There is talk of "ISA prisoners," savers who have ended up with negative real interest rates but are unable to transfer their cash anywhere else. This affects people far more than a beer duty cut - and undermines the very notion of thrift. The idea of putting some money aside and watching it grow is dying. When the Cypriot government proposed taking a slice of people's savings, there was outrage, but its error was to admit doing it. In Britain, QE is having precisely the same effect. Government policies are crushing savers - average rates have fallen by a third since Funding for Lending began eight months ago. Banks don't need money from the public when they can get it far cheaper from the Government. And lower interest rates have skimmed an additional £200 billion from our collective pension funds, according to industry estimates. This is how "monetary activism" works: low interest rates transfer wealth from savers to borrowers. And government, of course, is the hungriest borrower of all. Imagine, for example, if Osborne had stood up on Wednesday and announced a trickle-down tax that would award £127,000 to the richest households while making the poorest about £310 worse off. Grim, he'd say, but sadly necessary for the recovery. There would be an outcry; Ed Balls would be baying for blood. Yet this has been precisely the effect of all this money printing, according to official Bank of England figures. No one has protested. The small print of the Budget suggested that it will now be 2019 before the average salary returns to pre-crash levels: a lost decade. As a general rule, when living standards fall, so do governments. Osborne's "monetary activism" is arguably a greater gamble than anything Nigel Lawson attempted in the Eighties, since so few people can say with any confidence how quantitative easing will end - or whether Mark Carney will be so enthusiastic about all this when he finally arrives. It is certainly unfair, however, to accuse Osborne of being risk-averse, just because his Budgets are dull. The backgammon ace is simply playing two games. Fraser Nelson is Editor of 'The Spectator