There are two political implications of this. The first is that most people and many politicians understand, more than the intellectuals, that the way out of this crisis will be messy. There is no theory that works. Indeed, Obama has been absolutely forthright in his recognition of how big the mess is. Geithner has been criticised for not having a clear plan for the banking system. But this may be not so much because of a lack of clarity as much as because of a deeper kind of clarity that we are in uncharted waters, where most standard recipes look too glib. The second is that the deeper debate about the relationship between finance and real capitalism will define the axis of ideological argument. The people in Lansing are ardent capitalists. But it is a capitalism tied to real virtue, not abstract cleverness. In some ways we are back to the 18th century, when free-market liberals struggled to save capitalism, not just from public debt and perfidy, but also from projectors and speculators.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

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