I had a bad feeling on Friday night when I heard that finance ministers from the Group of Seven countries had prepared a draft communiqué even before they met.

Of course, they always do this, but at the end of a week in which money markets died and stock markets crashed, the world was waiting for a detailed action plan, not another business-as-usual signal. The final communiqué consisted of the usual G7 blandness – an insult to the intelligence of anyone who reads it.