Where I’m looking for the next great banking blow-up

A reader likens me to Dr Pangloss, the quack philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide who insisted that ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’ even after he was reduced to a syphilitic beggar. It’s true that I tend to regard positive indicators — a 22-year high in the BDO index of business expectations, a CBI statement that ‘we’re starting to see the right kind of growth’ — as a pattern of recovery, rather than a mirage in a minefield. But rest assured I’m also on constant alert for ‘black swans’, those change-making events that (so we learned from a more modern thinker, Nassim Nicholas Taleb) come out of the blue and have to be rationalised afterwards.

The January headline ‘Kiev in flames’ might fall into that category, for example, by signalling a dangerous new conflict zone. And I’m watching reports of forthcoming ‘stress tests’ on the capital adequacy of 124 European banks.