Cometh the hour, cometh the acronym. Thus might run the unspoken motto of American financial policy these days.

As the banking saga has unfolded in the past two years, a string of US initiatives have tumbled out, with titles so lengthy I will not attempt to list them in full. Remember the M-LEC programme that was launched to reorganise the shadow banks (but quickly died)? Then came Talf, TSLF and Tarp, which aim to provide liquidity, restart the securitisation machine and recapitalise the banks.