What we have is a summit without an agenda, on a crisis without an agreed cause, in a country without a functioning government. The US – whose outgoing President agreed to hold the meeting under French pressure, and whose President-elect, keen to stress that the US has "only one president at a time", won't even be there – has already bristled at European talk of a creating new supra-national regulators and international rules.

So little wonder everyone else is scrambling to downplay expectations for what might emerge, and to lengthen the timetable for achieving results. As one person from the UK delegation put it, "Bretton Woods took two years".