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I've had a couple of interesting conversations in the corridors of the forum today. They're with people from very different perspectives who have raised the same concern: our exit strategy.

Not so much the exit from the recession - people are suggesting policies to help us escape that all the time.

No, the exit some are worrying about is the exit from those very policies.

You see, we are in the midst of an incredible economic episode that will very probably be talked about by our grandchildren.

As a result of that, some very exceptional actions are being taken.
For example, we are spending money like crazy and will probably soon have to print it.

The government is borrowing money on a huge scale.

It is making loans to car companies and guaranteeing loans elsewhere.

The Bank of England is - or is about to start - buying up assets like corporate loans.

And we are all becoming shareholders in banks.

As a result of all this, governments and central banks are going to be left with a big chunk of the economy in their hands.

This might all be very sensible but it all has enormous implications down the road. What exactly are the mechanics of withdrawing these things?

One worry I've heard expressed is that of dependence on state intervention. Once you start supporting car manufacturers for example, how do you stop?

The bigger worry concerns all the assets the Treasury and Bank of England will own in the next few years. They will be sold off. Can you do that without disrupting the markets into which you are selling them?

And then there's the issue of all the borrowing the government has undertaken.

It can borrow easily now, by simply doing so from the Bank of England (it's a process called underfunding and its akin to printing money).

But that does have to stop at some stage.

And when the economy picks up, some of the cash that has been printed by the central bank will probably have to be withdrawn. That's because as the economy normalises, we will not need or want so much money swashing around as it can cause inflation.

Yet, withdrawing cash may not be easy.

Getting the timing and the extent of the withdrawal is hard...withdraw too much and you have deflation and recession. Withdraw too little, and you have inflation.

There's another problem too. If the Bank of England does end up printing money to lend to the UK government, it will at some point choose to no longer do so. By then, the government may be borrowing so much it can't find anyone else to take the loans over.

That could be the nastiest phase of the cycle for the UK.

Funnily enough, this Davos event has been called "Shaping the Post Crisis World". Some have thought it a bit premature to shape the post-crisis world, when we are so deeply in the crisis itself. (After all, the allies of World War 2 at least waited until 1945 to shape the peace at the Yalta conference).

But there is a valid conversation occurring here, about just how long we will need to unwind the measures we are taking.

You struggle to get any interviews with bankers for ages, then two come along at once.

You might have heard Stephen Green on the Today programme this morning, the chairman of the HSBC banking group.

Tomorrow you can hear Peter Sands on the programme, the group chief executive of .

Now Peter is rather interesting. He has a special status here as chairman of the Financial Services Governors, which is a collection of the senior bankers around Davos. It has been meeting to sort what exactly the banks want from the authorities.

That group will report to a collection of Treasury ministers and central bankers tomorrow (Saturday), a group known as IGWEL (Informal Gathering of World Economic Leaders).

And that group will help shape the G20 when it meets in April.

So through the different committees and groups, Peter represents the banking link in a chain that connects to global policy-makers.

Which raises a question: does anyone listen to bankers any more, given their fall from grace?

When I spoke to Peter Sands this morning, I asked him if banks had any sway over governments.

His answer got at the dilemma faced by us all: on the one hand, we want to kick the bankers into the ground for the mistakes they have made and the amounts they have paid themselves.

On the other hand we also want to stand them up, dust them off, smarten them up and get them running properly again.

The dilemma of whether to be recriminating or respectful of banks is one that even applies to interviews on the Today programme.

I have tended to be more respectful than recriminating, if only because the bankers we are speaking to are the ones who have not come looking for state support and thus have the least to be ashamed of.

But at some point, even those who hate the banks most will have to work out a policy for re-building them.

It might be to nationalise them, close them down and build new ones, change the guard at the top of them all, or to carry on as we are.

No-one should be under any illusion: when it comes to banks, you may not be able to live with them but you can't live without them.

There is not much here at Davos that everybody agrees on. That life is miserable at the moment, yes. They agree on that.

But one proposition keeps coming up time and time again without a dissenting murmur. It's that this is no time for nations to retreat into their shells.

In fact, as the participants flounder around for clarity in confusing times, that message is reassuringly appealing.

We've heard appeals against protectionism from of the World Trade Organisation (it's his professional duty to warn against it), from , the premier of China, of Russia and from the .

In fact, so many people agree with the idea, it's enough to make you worry that there must be something wrong with it.

As it happens, economic history supports the idea that protectionism is bad at times of global recession.

In the depression of the 1930s, nations did put up trade barriers. That policy might have selfishly benefited one country if they'd got away with doing it on their own. But when everybody does it, the lack of trade needlessly exacerbates the global problem.

Of course, even without trade barriers, a process of de-globalisation is already underway. American consumers are retreating from the shops for good economic reasons, and they are the ones who have underpinned the global trade boom for the last few years.

What's interesting here though, is the worry about another form of de-globalisation. It's not just the retreat from free trade that has concerned people. It's the retreat from global banking.

With banks being under political pressure to lend more and under simultaneous commercial pressure to lend less, there is one natural and worrying outcome: for them to lend, but only to lend at home.

In Davos this is being posited as a potential 2000's version of the mistakes made in the 30s.

You can hear Stephen Green, the group chairman of HSBC talk about this on the Today programme tomorrow morning (yes, an interview with a banker. Contrary to what we have told you, there are some here, particularly the ones from banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered, which have not been quite so badly affected by the downturn in the west).

It was Mr Green who raised the issue of de-globalisation in the interview, and he stressed it would not be to the advantage of the US and UK.

One obvious reason the US and UK would be particularly affected is that our banks have become quite dependent on foreign financing in recent years. (after all, we have not been saving much ourselves, so we've needed to borrow savings from elsewhere).

Over the next few years, we will of course have to save more domestically, but we can't allow ourselves to do that too quickly without worsening the recession. In the meantime, therefore, we need that globally-integrated banking system to keep money flowing around the world.

It'll be an interesting challenge to share round the lending in times when it is scarce.

And a quick thought for the word de-globalisation? Maybe it will soon hit the vernacular as the word globalisation did some years ago.

Maybe we'll even have anti-de-globalisation protestors at international summits in future, railing against the de-globalising tendencies of the modern banking system.

Stranger things have happened in the last year.

Each year the global business and political elite populate the small Swiss ski resort of to talk, to listen, and to get to know each other over drinks.

We are told the numbers arriving here are up on last year. It doesn't feel that way. Many bankers are staying away - and members of the new US administration probably have better things to be seen to be doing than flying to the Swiss Alps for a meeting. It means the event is a little short of big hitters.

No big loss there, cynics would say. This is where the people who got us into the economic mess now have the temerity to gather and talk as though they are the ones to get us out of it.

A fair point, but don't over-play it.

Hubris is no longer the word that describes Davos - humility is evident here, as well as shock.

And in defence of the organisers, there are sceptics wandering around town too. I've just chatted to , author of The Black Swan and one of the most vehement and credible critics of modern finance in the world. It is his first visit to Davos and he seems ready to tell the establishment that failed to invite him until now, just what he thinks of their sophisticated banking practices.

But if I had to find one word to encapsulate the conversations here it would be floundering. Many people have had the intellectual confidence knocked out of them.

So you get repeated expressions of amazement at what has happened, you get the same old questions running round and round. But it's all very unfocussed. The test that it has been a worthwhile meeting will be that it gets beyond that in the next few days.

I'll be here with Today producer Ollie Stone-Lee and we'll be reporting on the Davos phenomenon. I should say there are two big pluses to the event: one is that there are scores of cultural, social and scientific discussions and lectures. These "fringe" events are invariably the most interesting things on the schedule. We won't overlook them.

Secondly, the greatest thing about Davos is that it is very cold and snowy - thus forcing everybody to dress in silly boots and bear-like coats that automatically strip even masters of the universe of a bit of their dignity.

As I say, hubris is not the theme this year.