In March, shortly after the collapse of Bear Stearns, Barack Obama, the new President-elect, gave a speech in downtown Manhattan condemning the deregulation of the financial system in the 1980s and 1990s. It went too far, he said, and the result was “a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth, a market that favours Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both”.

To his supporters, the speech now seems prescient, another gleaming example of their standard bearer's sound judgement.