Over the past year or so, we've been bombarded with proposals for solving the destabilising imbalances at the heart of the global economy. Most focus on Asia's glut of savings and involve ideas for persuading cautious Asians to save less of their income and get out and consume more.
Now we've got a couple of new suggestions - one from the International Monetary Fund and one from the Asian economics team at Barclays Capital - which merit fresh attention for their originality.
The idea of the savings glut was first put forward in March 2005 by Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the United States Federal Reserve.
He argued that growing imbalances in the world economy, most noticeably the giant US current account deficit, were not caused not by the profligacy of American consumers. Instead, he blamed an excess of thrift in Asian countries, which in recent years have saved far more than they needed to fund their domestic investment programmes (see the first chart below).
The surplus got exported, largely to the US, where it depressed long-term interest rates, fuelling the risk-taking that led to last year's crash.
The popular view is that Asian savers are a prudent bunch of individuals, who spend little on consumer frippery but diligently squirrel away up to half their income each month to make up for a lack of state health-care or pension provisions.