Listening to Angela Merkel outline her expectations for next week’s G20 summit in London it is hard to recall that only three weeks ago US and European leaders were at loggerheads over how best to tackle the world financial and economic crises.

“We are coming together to make joint decisions, not to compete against each other,” she said. “We all want the same thing: to put the world economy back on its feet as fast as possible and to prevent such a crisis from happening again.”