Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, has been an outspoken critic of what he sees as unfettered globalisation and deregulation, announcing that Italy will use its G7 presidency from January to forge a “new Bretton Woods” system of monetary management.

For Mr Tremonti the financial crisis is “not the end of the world, but the end of a world”. But he also sees the US as fundamentally a “strong and flexible country”.