It's a bizare thought, but these are bizare times.
Peter Drysdale and Harold James:
"Only China has the firepower and capacity to be rescue the international financial system from the threats from America’s financial meltdown today.
When the 1920s and ’30s crisis hit, America alone had the capacity to take the big public sector action at home that was needed to stem the panic and economic collapse and the reserves to save Europe and the rest of the world from massive contagion.
Then, and now, a globalised world means that the solution to such crises spans borders. Aside from the United States, only China has the firepower to rescue the global conglomerates at the heart of the global financial system now under stress.
China can’t be expected to play its role in these affairs until it is brought into the centre of the global economic decision-making processes."
HT: Harry Clarke