Former Federal Reserve Bank chair Alan Greenspan famously described the past half-century as ‘the age of turbulence’¹ – a period characterised by several severe dips in global economic investment and consumption. There have been six such dips since 1960 (see Table 1).

During the 50 years between 1960 and 2010, world GDP grew in real terms at an estimated mean annual rate of 3.5%, with the fastest growth of 6.4% in 1964, and the lowest growth and only contraction in 2009, when the global output