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The title says it all: "What Citi is Doing to Expand the Flow of Credit, Support Homeowners and Help the US Economy." It is less than subtle but this week's progress report from Citigroup, complete with cutesy nuggets about lending to small gardening businesses, is part of an overdue public relations offensive by the banks. JPMorgan's chief executive Jamie Dimon, too, is telling anyone prepared to listen that the bank made $100bn of new loans in the fourth quarter, "real loans, consumer loans, credit card loans, that kind of stuff" - even if much of that "stuff" may only be rollovers.

Such platitudes may help appease an aggrieved public. But it does little to disguise the fact that the US authorities' efforts to boost the supply of credit have so far had little effect. On Friday, figures for consumer borrowing in December will reveal whether that remains the case, after consumer credit fell by a record $7.9bn in November logging its first back-to-back monthly declines since 1992.

Should credit remain frozen, that is not necessarily the fault of the banks. A total of 359 institutions have received Treasury funds. The missing piece of the credit puzzle is consumers' willingness to borrow. Here, much-needed deleveraging has just begun. December's savings as a percentage of disposable income stood at 3.6 per cent, compared to near zero in 2007, but still well below the 6.9 per cent average since 1959. Prior to 1983, the average was over 9 per cent. Lombard Street Research suggests that the need to reduce debt plus individuals' tumbling net worth (which tends to increase the propensity to save) could push the newly frugal US to a savings rate as high as 10 per cent.

Such a shift represents another niggle to the Congressional debate over the efficacy of tax cuts versus spending in economic stimulus. True, saved tax cuts may not provide near-term economic relief. But they could hasten the transition to healthier household balance sheets. Rather like the banks, political largesse is only one part of the economy's eventual cure.