But there is a more subtle flashing light we should be equally alarmed by: the fact that the financial whizzkids in the big banks are back, in force, making super-complicated derivatives again. Many a psychological study has found that humans take about seven years to get over, and then forget about, a major trauma. Historically, stock markets, being driven by humans, have tended to have a similar length memory of catastrophes, before making the same dumb mistakes again.

But it hasn't even been five years since derivatives (on that occasion based on daft mortgages) blew up the world, and yet these exotic creatures have already returned. With a vengeance.

Research from Thomson Reuters declared that banks were creating more derivatives known as asset-backed securities than at any time since before the Lehman Brothers crash. Of those, 22 per cent were made up of – and forgive me the alphabet soup here – CDOs and CLOs. The very type of derivatives that exploded last time. At this stage last year, only 6 per cent fell into those categories.

In other words, banks are creating more of the riskiest types of the riskiest products.