If somebody loses their job, they sometimes also lose their bearings. A decision is made to take an entirely new direction in life: get out of the rat race, downsize, learn a language, take up ballroom-dancing.

The economic crisis that began in 2008 seems to have unleashed a similar search for meaning among some western intellectuals and economists. But the fundamental assumptions they are questioning are not personal, but political.

Last week, I found myself moderating a grandly-titled seminar on the “Future of Capitalism” at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. The star turn on the panel was Robert Skidelsky, the biographer of John Maynard Keynes, who has been much in demand over the past two years, as Keynes has come back into fashion.