Caroline Flint has just announced a new £200m fund to buy unsold properties from desperate homebuilders and then rent them to social tenants.

By my calculations, that money could buy…..less than 1,000 average British homes.

In a country of more than 50m people, this is the equivalent of a finger in the dyke.

The  government’s other measure to prop up the housing market is no more impressive.

It is - as I predicted in this morning’s FT - opening up shared equity schemes to more first time buyers. I hope, for their sake, the youngsters ignore this temptation - at least until prices have fallen by 10 per cent or more.*

* The government’s own prediction, as spotted on Ms Flint’s cabinet briefing notes yesterday.

A tea-spluttering moment this morning when I read Anatole Kaletsky in The Times. 

Until recently the paper’s economics guru was a bull on the UK economy/housing market (accurately as it turned out).

Today, perhaps inspired by the latest IMF report, he was talking about price falls of up to 30 per cent.

 You might feel sympathetic towards Gordon Brown at this point. Why should he take the political flak for any downturn?

Here are three reasons which come to mind:

1] Changing the Bank of England’s inflation target from RPI to CPI (which does not include house price inflation). This enabled the monetary policy committee to cut interest rates much further in recent years. This allowed people to borrow more. Boom.

2] Shifting planning guidelines for new homes from greenfield to brownfield. Though well-intentioned, this has led to a glut of city centre flats, bought mainly by buy-to-let investors. Fingers will be scorched.

3] Rhetoric. Policies, speeches and initiatives have been laced with the presumption that house prices were a one-way bet. The target for home-ownership was upped to 90 per cent (why have one in the first place?).

Even now, the government is “helping” low-paid public sector workers risk what meagre savings they have getting on the housing ladder……as if this can only be a good thing.