T?he Excel centre, a windswept complex deep in London's Docklands, is best known as the venue for an annual boat show. On Thursday it is instead the destination for a flotilla of limousines as US president Barack Obama and other leaders assemble in an effort to rescue a shipwrecked world economy.

Central to the Group of 20 summit of industrialised and developing countries will be the question of whether the chaotic system of finance that swept the globe over the past two decades can be controlled. It is the equivalent of installing seatbelts, airbags and anti-lock brakes on cars that have just been involved in a head-on collision. If they succeed, driving should become safer. But some motorists may forsake the highway for slower country lanes.

Certainly there is no lack of determination for reform. Financial regulation, long dismissed as of interest only to technocrats, has been thrust up the political agenda by widespread public anger at the costly failures of the banking industry. Politicians now compete to propose swingeing regulations that would have been unthinkable just two years ago. Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, summed up the mood last week when explaining to a congressional committee why the authorities had pumped $170bn (￡119bn, €128bn) into AIG, the failed insurer. “We must ensure that our country never faces this situation again,” he said.