While the World Bank has its own concerns, it is all smiles on the other side of 19th Street at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF's latest World Economic Outlook, released last week, was so rosy that it should have been published on Valentine's Day. The IMF has also published the results of new consultations between the US, Japan, China, the eurozone and Saudi Arabia: they each unveiled fine-sounding plans and agreed that if they were implemented it would be a jolly good thing.

The G7 group of leading industrialised nations has also celebrated current growth and the forthcoming reduction of global economic imbalances. Much back-slapping all around; perhaps too much. Those huge imbalances - notably, the US current account deficit and the surplus in China and the Gulf - cannot go on forever, but it would be a brave forecaster who predicted when and how the see-saw will tip back.