Steve Forbes looks like an archetypal all-American guy arriving for breakfast at a smart London hotel clutching a large Starbucks cup in one hand and a bottle of diet coke in the other. He laughs and explains that he “absolutely loves” Big Macs too.

But Mr Forbes, chairman and chief executive of Forbes, is more than a patriotic businessman. He puts his money where his mouth is (and he has a substantial amount of money).

The multi-millionaire is an avid investor in American shares and is a regular donor to the Republican party — he has twice run as the Republican candidate in the US presidential primaries.

He is a large man, with a larger than life personality — dispensing advice and predictions on everything from the Russian economy (“They should align the rouble with the euro”) to US politics (“There is going to be economic stimulus on steroids when Obama comes in”).

He is a great believer that although capitalism may well have got us into the current crisis; it is the only way out. He firmly believes that we can get ourselves out of the current financial mess “as quickly as we went down” — “The basic strengths of the economy are there, and there is no reason why we can't start again”.

And the quickest way to start again will be to adopt the Steve Forbes recipe for financial stability - suspend mark to market, reinstate the uptick rule and guarantee Freddie and Fannie. Just add a dash of investment and you've got an economic treat.

Mr Forbes believes that we won't find the bottom of the market until mark-to-market accounting is abolished. He is a great lover of colourful car analogies — for instance he says that Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, contributed to our economic woes when he “flooded the engine of the economy with money”.

Likewise he has a motoring analogy for mark-to-market. In the current edition of Forbes he describes the accounting practice as “similar to a highway that has a top speed limit and a minimum speed. When the snow appears on the road, bad road conditions cause drivers to go slowly. Under a mark-to-market concept, police would be ticketing slow drivers for going below the minimum speed”.

More forcefully he tells me: “Mark-to-market has to be suspended. It is dead . . . The application to life insurance is just crazy - it is marking down stocks and bonds on people who are not going to die for years.”

He describes it as an “arcane practice” which has put the economy in a “death spiral.” He is no less passionate about the need to reinstate the uptick rule, which he also believes is hitting life assurance. Under the uptick rule a share could not be shorted unless it had gone up in price. “It's no surprise to anyone . . . that market volatility exploded after the uptick rule ceased. There were no speed bumps left when shorts went after a stock.”

This was compounded by another of his pet hates “naked” short selling - selling when you have not borrowed the shares. Thankfully he doesn't have a motoring analogy for this “lunacy”. Finally, he says that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should have their bonds guaranteed and be broken into smaller recapitalised companies to get the housing market moving quickly.

Does he think the British have handled the crisis any better? After all Gordon Brown recently claimed to have saved the world — the world's banking system. Mr Forbes is unimpressed. He describes the 45 per cent rate of tax as “nuts” — “raise allowances 50 per cent, double the threshold to £70,000”.

He says the British Government has not understood how to get the market going again. Instead he advocates making the UK a tax haven by lowering individual and corporate taxes. This, he says, will stimulate the economy. The prospect of a large national debt doesn't bother him. “You need to cut taxes and bail out. Get rid of the crisis and then worry about the aftermath.”

He is equally dismissive of the Government's plan to continue spending on infrastructure too. “If he wants to invest in infrastructure that's fine but it won't do a bloody thing to stimulate the economy.”

You come away from a meeting with Steve Forbes feeling a little like you have had an audience with a great man, rather like that other great American oracle of the modern age — Warren Buffett, a fellow coke drinker. However, you are left wondering whether these millionaires' musings really do have any relevance to the rest of us.

Lets hope so, he is optimistic that we can bounce back from the crisis quickly and that the financial services industry will flourish again.

CV

— Malcolm Stevenson “Steve” Forbes Jr is chairman and chief executive of Forbes and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine

— The grandson of BC Forbes, founder of the magazine, he is married with five daughters

— Forbes products include ForbesLife, ForbesLife Executive Woman and Gilder Technology Report plus several investment newsletters. Other company divisions include Forbes Investors Advisory Institute, Investopedia.com and RealClearPolitics.com

— He was a Republican candidate in the US Presidential primaries in 1996 and 2000. He has also been an adviser to Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain

— Between 1999 and 2006 he reportedly made political donations of more than $7 million

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