Oh dear.
Do you remember one of the most notorious quotes of the last recession? The claim in 1991 by the former Chancellor, Norman Lamont, that he was seeing "the green shoots of economic spring".
Well, the woman who is Gordon Brown's most important economic adviser and the Business minister has just repeated it.
Baroness Vadera said today that "I am seeing a few green shoots". She was asked on ITV's Lunchtime News whether she saw "green shoots" and being the consummate "backroom girl" that she is and not a frontline politician she did not spot the trap.
Her reply was: "It's a very uncertain world right now globally... I wouldn't want to be the one predicting it. I am seeing a few green shoots but it's a little bit too early to say exactly how they'd grow."
What on earth could she have meant by green shoots on a day Barclays has announced 2,000 redundancies?
I'm told that she was referring to the fact that the bond market had begun to open up for bigger borrowers and also to the good news from retailers like Morrisons and Tesco's who this week promised to create thousands more jobs.
That is unlikely to reduce the smile on the faces of some Tories who will claim that it proves how out of touch Team Brown are.
It is, of course, a double edged sword for the Conservatives since it could remind people about the last recession.
Credit is like the petrol that gets a car from A to B, but the petrol stations are closed - that's the metaphor used by the boss of a growing business I've just been interviewing about the problem with the banks.
Dan Wagner is chairman of Venda, which supplies e-commerce services to run online shopping for a whole series of big high street names. Even though he's growing his business, even though his suppliers are growing theirs, he can't get the bank loans he needs to expand his company.
That's the problem that today the announcement from the government is designed in part to solve. It's a problem experienced by many companies, as one of you wrote in a comment yesterday.
Another commenter, Chris Leopard, asked the question: "Why is it necessary to have to back up small business lending? I thought we owned some of these banks now, shouldn't we be pushing them about a bit?"
The idea of pushing the banks about a bit is the one the Liberal Democrats advocate. They suggest turning RBS, already 60 percent owned by us, into a state bank and ensuring that it offers more loans that it would do on purely commercial grounds.
It's an idea rejected by ministers and rejected by the Tories too. They argue that the problem is not that the banks are being mean or too cautious, but simply that there are far fewer banks available to offer credit than there once were. That's why they advocate loan guarantees, in the government's case for up to £20bn for small and medium size business loans, in the Tories' case for up to £50bn.
All sides agree that today is unlikely to be the solution although it may be part of it. That's why today is only the beginning of a process of trying to get credit flowing again and certainly not the end.
Intriguingly when I asked Peter Mandelson this morning whether he could rule out nationalising the banks he didn't do so. I'm not suggesting that this is about to happen, but it is evidence that everything is still on the table and no one yet knows what will make the difference.
UPDATE: My man at Venda has just been on to point out that although they couldn't get loans from the banks they were able to get money to expand by issuing shares instead. This is because they're a thriving business. It's an option that's not open to many weaker businesses
