As Larry Elliott notes this morning:

Strange things have happened during this crisis, not the least of which is that the IMF was last week praising in developed countries all the things it normally excoriates in developing nations.

Structural adjustment plans for the poor have involved privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation. Structural adjustment plans for the west, it seems, comprise of nationalisation, subsidisation and re-regulation.

The one-size-fits-all model of development is just one of the many sacred cows to have been slain over the past 14 months.

Too true: it's time to re-appraise the formulaic prescription handed down to developing countries. Nationalisation, tariffs and regulation should all be back in their list of options as they build viable states. If only we'd realised how the model they had been given failed them a little earlier we might have saved ourselves from the same fate. Now we have to give them the same chance we seek for ourselves.