As the opiate high induced by the European Central Bank’s liquidity injection starts to wear off, the economy is left groggily peering into the vast funding chasm that bars its route to a genuine recovery. What we badly need is for the financial industry to come up with an innovative way to bridge the gap.

If only banks could pool and package the loans they make so as to shift them off their overstretched balance sheets and sell them on to a wide base of non-bank investors who are desperate for higher-yielding assets. Oh. Wait. Hang on a minute.