In a way this is a key part of solving the problem. For unless we can achieve a truly common stance in the EU, achieving effective global rules for the financial markets becomes a wishful thinking.

Sensible people would say a massive failure of both regulation and oversight, as well as the revealed flaws of a highly simplistic economic philosophy, provide an indubitable answer to what to do. But some still argue that soft regulations should be the lynchpin of the new system. In my view, they are wrong whether they genuinely think so, or are driven by parochial interests.

The world has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. The decline of a misleading paradigm (which equates free markets with no regulations) has to be seen in conjunction with a rising multi-polar economic world in the attempt to forge a new international financial system. On the latter hinges, arguably, the fate of an open world economic system. I hope that the new American administration will be forthcoming in this respect.

But we, at home, in Europe have to rise to the momentousness of this period. Some of our own bickering and inability to compromise is not good omen in this respect