Back in the 1980s, there was much hubris in Japan about the superiority of the Japanese economic model. I fondly recall giving a talk at that time on the European single market programme to a group of visiting Japanese dignitaries who assured me Europe was "finished". The Japanese bubble promptly burst.

At the end of the 1990s it was the turn of the Americans to indulge in triumphalist rhetoric about their model of capitalism. Then camethe high-tech bust and recession.