It appears unlikely that we have yet reached the bottom of the current financial crisis. It is therefore necessary to devote our attention to immediate problems. As Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, has said, structural reforms “should not be decided in the midst of stressful situations”, lest they “add greater burden to a market already under strain”.

Stress and strain are now caused by a disorderly deleveraging process: a feedback between the plummeting valuation of all classes of asset-backed security, for which there is no market; huge losses across the whole financial system; the forced shrinking of banks’ balance sheets; insufficient capitalisation; and the freezing up of funding sources.