Giulio Tremonti, Italy's finance minister, has been an outspoken critic of what he sees as unfettered globalisation and deregulation, announcing that Italy will use its G7 presidency from January to forge a "new Bretton Woods" system of monetary management.

For Mr Tremonti the financial crisis is "not the end of the world, but the end of a world". But he also sees the US as fundamentally a "strong and flexible country".

A former Socialist who became deputy leader of the centre-right Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi, Mr Tremonti is known as a sceptic of globalisation who has tended to pin part of the blame for the crisis and surge in commodity prices on speculators.

In recent interviews, he has said it was hard to know whether halting speculation or pouring in public money would be a more effective response to the crisis.

A new Bretton Woods would set binding rules for all, he says, referring to the agreements signed by 44 countries in 1944.

His stated priorities are a ban on some forms of trading contracts, an end to tax havens and a crackdown on false accounting. Given the previous Berlusconi government's record on shifting the criminal definition of false accounting, this has been greeted with scepticism.

"It was enough to look at the balance sheets of the global megabanks to see that they stood up on the basis of financial illusion," Mr Tremonti told the daily Il Foglio, criticising what he saw as a wavering US response to the crisis. He compared Faust's pact with the devil to the "diabolic pact" between the US and Asia whereby US debt paid for low-cost Asian goods.

He is proposing to expand the G8 political summit to include the G5 emerging economies of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa plus Egypt, to become the G14. Diplomats say however that it is not clear that Italy is proposing a formal expansion of the G8.

On the domestic front, Mr Tremonti has led a chorus of reassuring statements by the government, telling Italians that their banking system is sound with sufficient liquidity. Statistics showing Italy moving close to recession failed to show the full picture, he told the FT recently.

A number of minor but popular measures have maintained the government's approval ratings, including the removal of tax on overtime and on a first property, a "Robin Hood" tax on energy companies and banks, and plans to issue €300 ($408) social cards for the poorest to help pay bills.

Mr Tremonti stresses that Italy on its own is limited in its ability to cope with the global slowdown. He proposes public works projects in Europe funded by capital raised by the European Investment Bank.