Last Thursday afternoon was the moment America finally realised its version of capitalism wasn’t working anymore. You could feel the pain of that eureka moment everywhere from Wall Street, where the credit markets seized up, to Main Street, where the middle class howled at the mind-boggling magnitude of a mooted $700bn bail-out package.

The most direct expression of this epiphany was on Capitol Hill, where an apostate faction of House Republicans declared their eleventh hour opposition to the financial plan being advanced by their own president and secretary of the Treasury.