Life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”, said Macbeth. He might have been talking of economic statistics. After the financial hurricane ravaged the indicators of economic strength, sunlight broke through. But a dense fog of confusion has since descended, obscuring where we are – falling fast, slowly, bumping along the bottom, or finally turning a corner.

What happened? Until this week, the talk was of green shoots. Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, said that “the financial system is starting to heal”. Even as circumspect an observer as Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, pronounced that the world economy is “around the inflection point” – that is, that the economic contraction has begun to decelerate.