We have had no recovery from 2008-09. Instead of recovery which a business cycle should bring following a downturn, we are on a precipice of even worse. This is from an interview with the head of the Bank for International Settlements:

The world economy is just as vulnerable to a financial crisis as it was in 2007, with the added danger that debt ratios are now far higher and emerging markets have been drawn into the fire as well, the Bank for International Settlements has warned.

Jaime Caruana, head of the Swiss-based financial watchdog, said investors were ignoring the risk of monetary tightening in their voracious hunt for yield.

“Markets seem to be considering only a very narrow spectrum of potential outcomes. They have become convinced that monetary conditions will remain easy for a very long time, and may be taking more assurance than central banks wish to give,” he told The Telegraph.

Mr Caruana said the international system is in many ways more fragile than it was in the build-up to the Lehman crisis.

Nothing like the path to recovery that has been pursued over the past five years. Everything not only unimproved but a massive potential fall now before us. And might I say, with this economic disaster there has been not a thing apparently learned from the policy errors made in 2009. What would be done if another recession comes to pass? This is the world now unlike how it was then.

Credit spreads have fallen to to wafer-thin levels. Companies are borrowing heavily to buy back their own shares. The BIS said 40pc of syndicated loans are to sub-investment grade borrowers, a higher ratio than in 2007, with ever fewer protection covenants for creditors.

The disturbing twist in this cycle is that China, Brazil, Turkey and other emerging economies have succumbed to private credit booms of their own, partly as a spill-over from quantitative easing in the West.

Private credit booms, as in a flood of credit with no real return.