It is not just the reputation of capitalism that has suffered a blow from the financial crisis. The prestige of democracy has been struck amidships. We have been in the habit of talking about “democratic capitalism” and “liberal democracy” and “liberal democratic capitalism” as if all these products of our philosophical sophistication can be bundled together. In a time of prosperity, they can be. But there are circumstances in which people are forced to choose which they want more – democracy or prosperity. We are picking the latter.

Elected bodies look venal and shambolic. A week ago the US Congress rejected Hank Paulson’s troubled assets relief programme. The bill was rescued not through further deliberation, but by purchasing the votes of congressmen with “pork barrel” spending, the living symbol of US legislative corruption. The great worry among the public was that Tarp was a fiscal Iraq – a display of “shock and awe” that did not impress the people it was supposed to. That fear was borne out when the market plummeted after Tarp’s passage. In the UK, when Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling put forward their own, arguably more creative rescue plan this past Wednesday and Thursday, stocks fell even further. Even if they are well designed and work perfectly, such programmes cede vast democratic prerogatives to unelected experts.