At our recent Economic Perspectives breakfast seminar, ‘Who saves the world from 2020 peril?’, I identified three bear scenarios for the global economy and financial markets. While the threats to prosperity and tranquillity that they represent are distinct, they are clearly not mutually exclusive. Bears can’t resist a picnic. The first bear, whose focus is advanced economy government and highly-rated corporate and financial bonds, concerns the Inconvenient Threat. The second bear, with illiquid equities in mind, is the Avoidable Threat. The third and most frightening bear, lurking in corporate credit and other contexts of sub-prime credit, is the Unavoidable Threat.
Figure 1
