The first chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Charles S. Hamlin, took office in August 1914, less than a week after Britain declared war on Germany. His successor two years later, W.P.G. Harding, had been in charge only eight months when the US entered the first world war.

Indeed, every Fed chairman has had a crisis to deal with in his first year - or so Jack Malvey, chief fixed income strategist at Lehman Brothers, only half-jokingly observes. Alan Greenspan, the incumbent, had his own baptism of fire when stock markets crashed in October 1987, two months after he took office.