It seems so unfair. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 was generally believed to have been spawned by an excess of reckless capitalism with its origins firmly in the US, and yet its effects are still being felt so keenly in Europe.

Whether you lay the blame at the original Greenspan "put", sub-prime mortgages, testosterone-fuelled Anglo Saxon investment banking cultures, an addiction to leverage or the financial alchemy of collateralised loans, all these innovations are emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes as much as an Independence Day march.