Adecade ago, crises in east Asia, Russia and Latin America caused economists to ??doubt the case for cross-border capital flows. However desirable the mobility of goods and people, mobility of capital was different. But the world ignored the intellectuals. Far from reining in financial globalisation, policymakers let it rip.

Might this time be different? Judging by the mood at the International Monetary Fund’s weekend gathering, it might. Emerging economies that have resisted opening up capital markets – China and, to a lesser extent, India – are pleased about their caution; those that liberalised more hastily – including Brazil, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea and Russia – have reimposed restrictions. In sclerotic ageing democracies – Sads, one might call them – there is talk of erecting barriers to Chinese capital inflows.

The case against financial globalisation is more powerful now than in the 1990s. Then, policymakers in emerging economies bet that they could ignore the intellectuals if they protected themselves against sudden outflows of hot money by accumulating vast foreign exchange reserves. But this proved disastrous. Determined reserve accumulation implied huge capital exports to the issuer of the reserve currency, with the result that the US experienced the mother of all bubbles. When the bubble burst, hot money whooshed out of emerging markets so rapidly that even prodigious reserve accumulators such as South Korea needed emergency dollar lifelines from the Federal Reserve.