Joshua Rosner: In a capitalist economy, losers are expected to take losses and winners to gain. Private enterprise is best able to allocate capital efficiently and, where it fails to do so, markets make adjustments and capital is reallocated to efficient users.

This basic tenet supports good and productive assets moving from the hands of weak players to stronger. Where this is not possible, the US system gives the government a hand in fostering that move through an efficient process called bankruptcy or reorganisation. This rule of markets and of law has always been the basis of our national supremacy in innovation and the reason ours was the world's clear choice of a reserve currency. That was the world we lived in previously.