When Sentinel, a large American investment house, stopped investors from withdrawing their money this week, it cited market “panic”. No wonder: markets around the world gyrated dramatically in recent days, contributing to a growing sense of crisis in parts of the financial world.

But what has been almost as remarkable as this month’s market turmoil is the reaction of economists: unlike their ­panic-stricken counterparts on bank trading floors, the pundits paid to analyse the “real” economy have been saying: “Crisis, what crisis?”