The next financial crisis may be coming soon

WHAT probability do you give that there might be a new financial crisis? This month, the number crunchers at Oxford Economics, a research group, asked 162 global businesses this question. Their average answer was 20 per cent over the next two years.

That is twice as high as the perceived risk of a second global wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and also, sadly, the probability of an early effective vaccine arriving.

These fears already have tangible consequences: they pushed down business sentiment more in this month's Oxford survey than hard data justified. "Our analysis suggests that financial crisis fears account for much of the gloom," said Jamie Thompson, the poll's lead economist.