I have devoted a number of blogs to commenting on the chilly economic winter many parts of the world are experiencing, and to an extent this has only added to the chattering of industry teeth. That said, outsourcing will increasingly be called into question over the coming months and our industry needs to know how to respond.

Announcements today suggest that the UK – whose economic options seem limited by inflationary fears – now feels the need to be as interventionist as the United States, given that Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling has set out plans for a more US-style banking industry, to prevent another run on a high street bank.

To an extent, this was inevitable, but the government's proposals were announced on the same day as Mervyn Peake – apologies, I mean Mervyn King (Mervyn Peake was the author of the none-more-doom-laden 'Ghormenghast' novels) – was appointed as Governor of the Bank of England for a second five-year turn.

One of the first actions of the previous Chancellor, Gordon Brown, was to make the Bank of England more independent, whereas this announcement effectively strips Threadneedle Street of some of its powers – a policy that is arguably more in keeping with traditional Labour values. Indeed, it is rather like congratulating Mr. King with one hand, and slapping him in the face with the other (an iron handshake, no less).

The Financial Services Authority, meanwhile – much criticised for its handling of the Northern Rock affair – will be given the right to investigate and intervene in banks' affairs at short notice. More controversially still for fans of a free, transparent market (there may still be some in the City), the new rules will allow the Bank of England to offer financial support to troubled institutions in secret.

So it seems that the solution to the financial sector's cold snap on this side of the Atlantic is a muffler: a more secretive, more clandestine industry. To put it another way, it's a free market in camera, and one controlled more directly by a Whitehall that also seems keen to bail out private investors with public money.

(Indeed, if you felt your tongue inching towards your cheek, you could argue that a strategy of centralised public control for the benefit of careful private investors (rather than a careless public) may be a 'push-me, pull-you' beast, but it seems to work for the Chinese, not to mention President Putin.)

On the other hand, perhaps all this is simply an example of realpolitik, 21st century style – that brand of nineteenth century politics that was variously interpreted as a means to maintain the balance of power in Europe, as a form of polite diplomacy, or as an instrument of rampant nationalism, depending on which country you were in when you said it.

Either way, it seems that the western economies risk becoming increasingly isolated from those of the East, while more closely modeling themselves on them – at least if a new survey published by Fortune magazine is to be believed. More of that separately...