For decades westerners have lectured central and eastern European policymakers on how to regulate and supervise, balance their budgets and stem credit expansion. Now they must deal with the consequences of a global crisis triggered because the west broke all the rules it preached. Worse, it is a crisis they cannot do much to resolve. They cannot even benefit from the bargains of distressed assets. Unlike some resource-rich neighbours in the east, they are not sitting on huge reserves that could bail out western institutions.

Much is at stake for these economies. Elsewhere countries have lost decades of development in a single crisis. Most eastern Europeans still have the Asian and Russian crises of 1997-98 fresh in their minds. They have been told they are vulnerable – in fact, according to the International Monetary Fund last year, the world’s most vulnerable.