Ryan-Kane says that the changes to the banking system starting in the 1980s meant that they moved from being lenders to originators, with risks associated with commercial property, as an example, shifting from banks to super funds. This led to the ploughing in of cornfields to allow the building of Mc- Mansions, turning semi-rural areas into new suburbs. The growth in financing allowed people to drag forward their consumption. The developing world got a glimpse of how the rest of the world was living. They may have been living in shanty towns but they shopped at giant new shopping malls.

But the development of a ‘shadow’ banking system, particularly in the developed world, to replace the traditional dominance of the banks has probably eased the burden of the crisis too. “We’re not seeing the same level of corporate failure as we would have a decade ago with the same sort of dislocation,” Ryan-Kane says. And the level of savings, thanks to pension funds, is far higher now than in 1929. The response to the early stages of the crisis by most professional investors was to do nothing, Ryan-Kane says, which proved to be the right decision (or indecision). But individuals, who dominated the financial investing world in 1929, tended to go to cash. In all, there is more ground for optimism than pessimism, he says.