Crisis, what crisis? As I write, a small voice tells me I may come to regret this column. This is just not the moment, it whispers, to look on the bright side. Even the International Monetary Fund has joined the panic. The Fund, I recall from distant days as an economics writer, was once a model of sobriety. Now it is conjuring up images of the dust-bowl days.

My problem is that I am not convinced that the crisis in financial markets will push the world over the edge of the economic precipice. Worse, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about a collapsing housing market, soaring food prices and the threat of recession, it occurs to me that, for Britain at least, some good may come of the present reckoning.