America’s venture capitalists are getting hot under the collar about what they claim is a serious malfunction in the capital markets. This has been building up for longer than the wider global meltdown: it is a falling-off, since the start of this decade, in the number of young, growth companies seeking a stock market listing. If the way to Wall Street is blocked, the start-up investors warn, the next Google may instead get swallowed by a bigger company and never fulfil its promise.

The first thing to note is that if this is indeed a problem, it is relative. It is true that this decade has not brought forth as many new public companies as the last but, by the standards of any other country, the US innovation engine is still working overtime – with the obvious exception of the months since the financial shock.