Most people know about Murphy’s Law. Just for the record, it says that anything that can go wrong, will. A refinement of this principle – known as Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s Law – is even gloomier. It states that, not only will anything that can go wrong do so, it will happen at the worst possible moment.

This sounds like a fairly good description of how the world currently looks to central bankers, regulators, bankers, investors and a growing number of people in the US and elsewhere.