Governments of the world are becoming major shareholders in their financial institutions. The British government owns two mortgage lenders – Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock – is likely soon to hold a majority of the capital of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and to be much the largest shareholder in the combined HBOS/Lloyds TSB. The US government has a dominant holding in AIG, one of the world’s largest insurers, and will soon hold a similar position in Citigroup, making it the biggest financial institution of all. Fortis and ABN Amro are owned by Benelux governments. And so on.

Early socialists must be chuckling in their graves. But this government control of the commanding heights does not represent the triumph of socialism over capitalism, but the necessity of pragmatism in the face of failures of capitalism. Governments do not want to own these stakes, and are not quite sure what to do with them.