The structures around which global financial markets have been built are afire. A worldwide bucket brigade has been formed, but when this article went to press its efforts had been largely ineffectual. How much of the edifice will survive the conflagration remains unclear. From the ashes, however, a new and more robust structure could arise. Just as governments jumpstarted the financial modernisation of the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and Japan (in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th