The past year has seen an unprecedented monetary stimulus unleashed on the world – although it is not quite true that we have never been here before. In 1990, in response to the savings and loan crisis, Alan Greenspan cut rates, committed to keeping them low and freely supplied funds to US banks. Such policies are common to today’s quantitative easing programmes – although, as Andrew Hunt Economics notes, they were not called QE at the time. It was, perhaps, half QE.

The result was a “melt-up”. Banks borrowed from the Federal Reserve at 3 per cent, and bought longer- dated Treasuries that yielded twice as much. Thus recapitalised, they created further liquidity. Financial recovery followed; equity markets soared, bond yields fell, emerging markets boomed. Economic recovery followed three years later.