As the gavel dropped and the US House of Representatives passed a $700bn bail-out, attention immediately turned to how Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, would ùse his new power and what impact intervention of such a scale would have on a new president and Congress.

Treasury officials indicate it will take weeks, not months, to get the programme up and running – with Mr Paulson expected to spend about $50bn a month to buy troubled assets on behalf of the Treasury. But otherwise little is known about how the former Goldman Sachs chief executive would go about spending tens of billions of dollars to stabilise the financial markets.