DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Creating "bad banks" may be the only solution to the worst financial crisis in generations, but the quid pro quo of government-led fixes may be more insular lending and a de-globalisation of finance.

After almost 100 hours of debate, discussion and dinners at this year's Davos World Economic Forum, many politicians, bankers and economists reckon the uncoordinated scramble by states to support national banking systems will now gravitate around "good bank/bad bank" solutions.

The global economy, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects to slow to near zero this year for the first time since World War Two, cannot recover until the financial system is stabilised, IMF first deputy John Lipsky said on Saturday.

And this is unlikely to happen, many say, until the bad mortgage and real estate debts devastating their balance sheets and discouraging them from new lending are surgically removed by governments and placed in so-called "bad banks."

Remove the cancer so the rest of the body can live on, so the theory goes. In effect it allows the remaining "good bank" to raise new private capital and resume lending to businesses and households without the need for outright nationalisation.

Following Sweden's lead from its banking crisis of the 1990s, Switzerland adopted this approach last year in attempting to stabilise its biggest bank UBS.

The US, under the new Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama, is now widely expected to adopt some form of bad bank approach in the coming weeks, assuming it can solve the thorny issue of how to price the toxic assets.

Financier George Soros said he favours a variation he called a "good bank" — keeping existing bank capital together with the bad assets in a "bad bank" and creating a new bank with the good assets. The government would then recapitalise the good bank and existing shareholders could invest more money.