We are all socialists now, cry the the mass of pin-striped bankers, lager-quaffing city traders and claret-fuelled leader writers. If that is so, is what we see here an archetypal if not the quintessential face of late capitalism? There is a deep resignation there, an acceptance of fate.

But what I don’t get about International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the contradictory signals he’s currently sending out. On the one hand we have dire warnings about the international financial system being on the “brink of systemic meltdown”, and on the other a most peculiar optimism regarding the decisions being made now in G7 capitals. So, dear DSK, are we all headed for hell in a handbasket, or will everything come up roses? And why?