Not everyone can be as prescient as Alan Greenspan, the former US Federal Reserve chairman, who warned of “irrational exuberance” years before the internet bubble finally burst. Take, for example, his successor, Ben Bernanke. His reading of the still-unwinding fall-out from the US subprime crisis has been less than astute, according to some commentators.

In a recent note to clients, Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg selected a series of quotes from Mr Bernanke this year that might already haunt him. On February 14, for instance, he noted that “some tentative signs of stabilisation have recently appeared in the housing market”. Then, on March 28, he said “the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained”.