The International Monetary Fund has been on quite a journey these past 10 years. From being a cheerleader for austerity, it is now telling countries that low interest and negligible inflationary pressure mean they can borrow and spend.

Up to a point. Old habits die hard, and the advice doled out by the IMF’s research team is not always followed on the ground by the hit squads sent in to sort out the economic problems of countries in trouble. Nobody in Argentina or Ecuador thinks the IMF has gone soft on fiscal policy.

Even so, the intellectual shift at the macro level is both real and significant. Back in 2009, when the world economy was showing the first signs of recovery, the IMF’s view was that central banks would provide the growth through low interest rates and quantitative easing while governments used tighter fiscal policy – higher taxes and cuts in public spending – to reduce the budget deficits that had ballooned during the slump.

This mix of loose monetary policy and stringent fiscal policy was precisely what George Osborne championed in the UK, and the IMF gave the then chancellor its support.

Gradually, though, the mood changed. IMF research showed that the impact of tight fiscal policy was more powerful when interest rates were low and all countries were implementing austerity policies simultaneously.

Now, with the global economy in what the IMF calls a “synchronised slowdown”, it has gone further. The view now is that monetary policy is doing far too much of the heavy lifting and is having the undesirable side-effect of making another financial crash more likely by artificially boosting asset prices.

The IMF is usually restrained when it comes to criticising member states – especially powerful developed ones – but Gita Gopinath, the economic counsellor, used the platform of the foreword to the half-yearly World Economic Outlook to publicly call out Germany as a country that needed to take advantage of negative interest rates to invest more in infrastructure.

In Britain, the IMF’s acceptance that financing a build-up of public debt is a lot easier when borrowing for governments is so cheap, comes at an opportune moment for the UK chancellor, Sajid Javid.

After increasing spending last month, Javid is planning to announce tax cuts in next month’s budget. Javid will need some political cover when he announces new, less tough, fiscal rules. The IMF has provided it.