With goodwill and imagination, the G20 leaders can commit themselves to a co-ordinated, co-operative solution to the financial crisis that, day by day, is sweeping across the developing world. That would be a powerful political response to an immediate problem. The alternative, that countries look out for their own interest while the system falls apart, is too horrible to contemplate.

The financial crisis is now – through a global liquidity crunch and extreme risk aversion among investors – affecting even stable and well-run emerging markets. Recent moves to combat it are substantive steps in the right direction.

The Federal Reserve's decision to extend its currency swap lines to Singapore, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil was a courageous and timely way to support well-run emerging market countries. With its new short-term facility, the International Monetary Fund also seems finally to have found a way to support fundamentally stable economies with temporary liquidity problems.