“What, me worry?”, asked the cheerfully gap-toothed and freckle-faced Alfred E. Neumann from the front cover of Mad magazine all through my youth. I wonder how long his outlook would last if he spent any time reading today’s newspapers.

Last week, for example, my colleague Martin Wolf took us through Professor Nouriel Roubini’s “12 steps to financial ruin” scenario, a scarily plausible account of how the world could be facing a deep US recession soon. By step eight I had to take a time-out and head to the canteen for a doughnut. What, me worry? You betcha.