I was a mythology and fairy tale nut when I was a kid, and this love for primal story has stuck with me for my whole life, partly because of the richness of the stories and partly because of the immense wisdom contained in many of them. One old Kentucky legend – and I wish to goodness I could remember where I read it – was about a boy whose blanket was too short.

It wasn't his fault, nor the blanket's. He was a growing boy, and the blanket was designed for a child. But throughout one very cold winter, he noticed that while he could pull the blanket up around his shoulders to keep them warm, his feet stuck out from the other end – then his ankles – then his calves. At last, he decided to take action.

He cut off the top of the blanket, where there was ample coverage, and sewed it onto the bottom of the blanket. This, he thought, should make the blanket plenty long.

To his surprise, the blanket seemed even shorter! So he cut off another strip and stitched it to the bottom, and then another, and then another. Eventually, his blanket was nothing but strips of cloth sewn together, and he had to spend the rest of that cold winter shivering, blaming his growing body for that ever-shrinking blanket.

In just the same way, our government is snipping off the top of our economic blanket to stitch to the bottom, and when our feet are still exposed, it snips off the next – and the next – and the next.

When, I wonder, will they figure out that their brilliant idea is never going to work? And how long will we all be shivering in the cold?