The International Monetary Fund has revised its estimate for the total losses on US-originated assets to $1.4 trillion (€1 trillion) but has predicted that the turmoil in the global markets will ultimately spawn a more “resilient” financial system.

Speaking at a press conference in Washington, Jaime Caruana, counsellor and director of the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said: "The figure that we gave in April was a little bit below $1 trillion. In July in the update we said that we may revise that slightly, but not too much. However, after the events basically in late August and mainly in September, we had to revise this figure with the same methodology."