The history of the post-Cold War era has been the triumph of economic institutions over political ones. So it is that we place huge trust in the ability of central bankers and finance ministers to deliver us from economic strife.
Not since before World War I has confidence in governments' ability to manage global capitalist systems been so high. While the risk of Asia's economic crisis spreading dominates policy makers' attention, our belief in their ability to turn things around is strong.
With a mission to assuage financial markets, ministers rushed through huge export credits to fund trade finance where banks now fear to tread. Asian economies depend on exports, but the worst affected cannot capitalise on their exchange rate advantage due to paralysis in their financial systems.
Too little, too late? The fear is that embattled Asian economies will turn away from the free trade system and resort to protectionism. The spectre of a 1930s style beggar-thy-neighbour world where politicians see little benefit from open markets and the loss of control that entails is the one that frightens the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations.
While world media attention is focused on the Gulf, Indonesia represents the single gravest threat to economic stability. Should it collapse into anarchy and hyper-inflation, the effect will be far more than the 1 per cent reduction in growth promised by the containment-school of economics.
Clearly, without the will to pursue domestic reform, recovery is impossible. In Indonesia the ethnic-Chinese business elite put its liquid capital off-shore before anyone else. It will not return without basic guarantees of stability.
Asia needs to find a new way to growth. The limits to labour-intensive exports would have posed problems even without the huge misallocation of resources by corrupt financial systems. Yet, in the short run it is these industries that will allow current accounts to recover and central bank balance sheets to be re-built.
