Smiles were brought to the face of Tories inside the Treasury when the little known Lord Tunnicliffe, Labour's Deputy Chief Whip in the Lords, made the mistake of assuming that no-one listens to what's said in the House of Lords.
Labour peer Lord McFall, a former chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee, said that the government's policy had "failed".
Shadow Treasury Lord Davies of Oldham signalled the opposition's broad support but raised some doubts about allowing corporate bodies to join credit unions.
Commercial Secretary to the Treasury Lord Sassoon agreed that resolution of the crisis was in Britain's "vital national interest".
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Hooson called on the government to use some of the Treasury's surplus to help farmers.
That may collide with attempts to change the Barnett formula, which controls the distribution of public money between the nations of the UK, and which many MPs and the eponymous former Labour Treasury Minister, Lord Barnett, argue gives too much money to Scotland.
Treasury Minister Lord Sassoon said report stage of the bill was neither "the time nor the place" to debate changes to the Barnett Formula.
It's in effect a demand for the new macro-prudential regulator being created by the Treasury which will sit within the Bank of England - the Financial Policy Committee, of which Lord Turner is a member - to have important and unprecedented new powers to determine credit creation by banks and to determine the distribution of credit.
Summing up the debate for Labour, opposition Treasury spokesman Lord Davies of Oldham said "austerity is proving to be unacceptable in a whole range of countries".
The former City minister, Lord Myners, has denied he or his Treasury colleagues put any pressure on the Bank of England over the setting of the Libor rate.
Treasury Minister Lord Sassoon urged peers to "emphatically reject" the Labour motion of regret.
Lord Barnett proposed amending his own Barnett Formula - used by the Treasury to set the budgets of the devolved nations.
In a conference week peppered with dire warnings, the party's former Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott suggested that if the economy does not improve by the time of the next election, the government and the Lib Dems could be "slaughtered".
On 6 October 2010, peers welcomed changes introduced by Treasury minister Lord Sassoon to the Terrorist Asset Freezing Bill that would mean that the assets of a person can be permanently frozen only if the Treasury "believe" rather than "suspect" that they are engaged in terrorism.
Lord Turner may well be right to say that the Bank and the Treasury will have to go further out of their comfort zone to get the economy back on track.
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