Sometimes the best way to repair a severely dilapidated house is to knock it down and rebuild it. This column argues for bank nationalisation as the best hope for maintaining a private banking system. Risky, and it could go wrong, but it is the surest path to avoid a “lost decade” like Japan.

The development theme in the Global Crisis Debate has elicited many important and novel contributions on what the crisis means for the developing world and how developing nations should react. This column provides a synthesis and commentary of the key proposals.