The past decade saw a familiar routine: breathless economists predicting that the second golden age of globalisation was about to go into reverse. The bursting of the tech bubble, 9/11, Sars, avian flu, the food crisis, the oil price crisis – all were touted as the modern equivalent of the first world war, which brought the first golden age to an abrupt halt.

In the event, the growth of trade in goods, services and capital marched on. Then it ran into the shuddering stop in economic growth and evaporation of financial-market liquidity at the end of last year. In the words of the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a Dutch think-tank that constructs an index of world trade, “three crazy months” beginning in November saw global trade go into virtual freefall, dropping by a fifth.