Professor Philip Lane:

When your back is to the wall financially you are going to gather funding where you can. The fact of that funding being available was important to limit the amount we needed to borrow from the rest of the world. In accounting for the crisis it is important to keep in mind that its impact is not just the increase in debt but the fact that we had to run down that fund. That should be definitely included in the overall financial cost. The rainy day fund would have existed on top of that.