WHEN THE DEEPEST economic crisis of the past fifty years finally ends, a changed world will be left in its wake. Capitalism will still be with us, but the new capitalism could differ substantially from the old. One key feature could be a new form of globalisation. In the current crisis it is already apparent that nations that were relatively ‘decoupled’ from global markets as they entered this recession have done better than the more ‘globalised’ ones. The lessons of their success are now under scrutiny.

Even though it’s too soon to see the future clearly, the forces that will shape the new capitalism can be found in the underlying origins and peculiar character of this recession. This crisis differs from others over the past half-century, not just in its extent and intensity, but in its causes and course.