The prospect of meltdown of the financial system by collapse of major banks around the world could not have been allowed to happen. The impact on all of us, through accelerated shrinkage of the economy and its effect on jobs, savings, pensions and mortgages were too terrible to contemplate.

With other members of the Treasury Select Committee, I spent much of last week in Asia, visiting central bankers and Ministry of Finance officials in Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong to discuss the current turmoil in banks and financial markets all over the world. We went to learn lessons from the prolonged bank crisis in Japan from the early 1990s and the financial meltdown elsewhere in Asia in the late 1990s.

It was clear that confidence is key and can only be restored once banks, investors, companies and consumers believe the authorities have a clear economic plan and are prepared to act decisively if needed.

It took Japan 10 years to take sufficient policy action eventually to restore confidence some years later.

While I differ over the detail, I believe it was right to support steps being taken last week and this by the government to bolster banks.

Now is not the time to apportion blame for the asset price bubble, fuelled by excessively risky lending, which soared over the past decade.

But the UK enters this uncertain environment having to face up to the legacy of ten years of economic mismanagement. This spendaholic culture leaves consumers and the country debt ridden and the UK one of the least well-equipped to stave off a major recession.