By continually restricting the available finance from central government Osborne is encouraging a boom in personal debt and excessive council borrowing from the City of London.
Dispatches will tonight report on the latest banking scandal - the kickbacks and dodgy loans surrounding local government financing. So what's going on?
Huge sums that are supposed to fund the National Health Service are finding their way into yet more offshore tax havens, channelled through Private Finance initiative (PFI) projects.