On November 15, barely 10 days after the election of a new US president, the world’s leading economies will gather in Washington to discuss the global financial crisis. Although the Group of 20 gathering has been thrown together at short notice, amid inflated talk about constructing a new Bretton Woods agreement to reform global economic governance, it can still play a valuable role.

With goodwill and imagination, the G20 leaders can commit themselves to a co-ordinated, co-operative solution to the financial crisis that, day by day, is sweeping across the developing world. That would be a powerful political response to an immediate problem. The alternative, that countries look out for their own interest while the system falls apart, is too horrible to contemplate.