If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old International Monetary Fund hands would say when confronted by the current situation of the US: nationalise the banking system. The government has already essentially guaranteed the system’s liabilities, bank assets at market value must be massively lower than liabilities and a severe global recession may yet turn into the Greatest Depression.

Nationalisation would simplify the job of cleaning up bank balance sheets, without which no amount of recapitalisation can make sense. An asset management company would be constructed for each nationalised bank, and loans and securities could be clearly divided into “definitely good” and “everything else”.