The global financial crisis has exposed the failure of the laissez-faire, unregulated free market capitalism. Governments of a number of industrialised countries allocated an excess of $7 trillion in bailout and liquidity injections to revive their economies. Despite this “helicopter money”, capitalist market economies are not yet out of the woods. Sovereign debt is the latest episode.

“Imported” capitalism in the Muslim world has begun faltering. It now appears that the city of Dubai and the much-touted Grameen Bank experiment may not be as successful as they were initially made out to be.