This does not mean we are on the cusp of recession or racing headlong towards some imminent reckoning, but we are probably in the final innings of this epic asset boom. Didier Saint-Georges, from fund manager Carmignac, says the “massive and indiscriminate equity market rally” since February’s panic-lows is a false dawn driven by short-covering, telling us little about the world’s deformed economic, financial, and political landscape.

Corporate earnings peaked at $1.845 trillion (£1.3 trillion) in the second quarter of 2015, and recessions typically start five to seven quarters after the peak. "We will not be dancing on the volcano like so many others," said Saint-Georges. What is clear is that the Fed and fellow central banks can do precious little to reverse a chronic decline in productivity. In this respect, we have reached the limits of central bank action.

1 - A man-made virus wipes out life on our planet

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees made a gloomy bet in 2003 that by 2020, one million people would have died in a single instance of ‘bio-terror - or bio-error’. He still believes the risk of both ‘bio-terror’ and ‘bio-error’ is real. Rees said, 'My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual weirdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses.’

2 - A nuclear war erupts in the Middle East

Sadly, this remains the most likely scenario - with several influential thinkers having said that recent confrontations between nuclear-armed states mean nuclear war is more likely now than ever. In 2015, the hands of the ‘Doomsday Clock’ - maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - were moved two minutes closer to midnight, due in part to the threat of nuclear weapons. They remained there this year.

3 - A supervolcano erupts

Could a supervolcano really plunge the Earth into darkness - and change our climate forever? Answer: yes. The huge ‘supervolcano’ thought to lurk under Yellowstone Park will blanket the USA in ash when it finally erupts. The eruption will be so catastrophic it will change the world’s climate.

4 - A solar storm blasts the Earth

A ‘super solar storm’ could burn out power stations, cut water supplies, leave millions hungry, and leave satellites dead in the skies. In 2012, solar scientist Pete Riley, said that the probability of a ‘super solar storm’ hitting Earth in the next ten years was ‘around 12%’. Experts fear that a storm could burn out electrical grids around the world.

5 -Killer robots take over

It’s a familiar scenario from science fiction - but could killer robots actually pose a threat to humankind? Answer: yes, but probably not in the way Hollywood imagines. Human Rights Watch warn that Terminator-style robots - which can ‘decide’ to kill - will be feasible in decades. Human Rights watch has claimed that several governments are working on the technology.

It is part of a $21 million plan which is backed by the Boyalife group in collaboration with South Korean company Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. Xu Xiaochun, CEO of Boyalife, said: “Everything in the supermarket looks good – it’s almost all shiny, good-looking, and uniformly shaped. For animals, we weren’t able to do that in the past. But with our cloning factory, we choose to do so now.

"The technology is already there. If this is allowed. I don't think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology.” While ethical questions are bound to rise, the US’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that “meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day.”

The astonishing move came as the Prime Minister, David Cameron, confronted the Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a meeting in Washington, pleading for action to slow the flood of Chinese steel exports reaching Europe. The imminent demise of the Port Talbot steelworks and Tata’s wider steel operations in Britain has mushroomed within days into a full-blown national drama, calling into question the Government’s whole approach to China.

The Chinese ministry of commerce said in a terse statement that it was slapping anti-dumping tariffs of 14.4 percent to 46.3 percent on companies from the EU, South Korea, and Japan, claiming that China had suffered “substantial damage” from trade abuses. In a macabre twist, the measures target the Tata plant in Port Talbot, which produces the specialist flat-rolled electrical steel used in transformers. A tiny amount is exported to China.

“If this is not a trade war, I don’t know what is,” said Gareth Stace, director of UK Steel. “We’re literally drowning in a flood of Chinese imports globally. We’re certainly not seeing a flood of European steel into China.” China’s share of global steel output has risen from 10 percent to 50 percent over the last twelve years, with the single province of Hebei now producing twenty times as much as Britain. China’s excess capacity is 400 million tonnes, double the size of the entire EU steel industry.

They are citing the continent's growing refugee crisis as the perfect excuse to execute the unprecedented military operation, which would comprise of a "civil-police-military mission" to kick out illegal immigrants.

But critics have dismissed the idea for a “bridging mission” using a joint military force along the EU border as "an excuse" to rush an EU Army in through the back door. They added that once such a force is established, there is a possibility it would never be disbanded.

Austria and its Balkans neighbours are calling for the creation of an EU military force, which would be deployed to Europe's external borders to help kick out migrants. But, critics on social media attacked the proposed military force as "an excuse" and "manipulative of a crisis". Others said the proposal served as a warning about the consequences of staying with Brussels ahead of the EU referendum.

The data in the so-called Panama Papers, “provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, FIFA officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes,” the German newspaper wrote.

The information in the leak covers the activities of the Mossack Fonseca firm over a period from the 1970s to spring 2016. “The Panama Papers include approximately 11.5 million documents – more than the combined total of the Wikileaks Cablegate, Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss Leaks,” SZ said.

The leak claims to expose the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides data on the financial activities of 128 other politicians and public officials from different countries.

Australia’s tax authorities said on Monday that they are investigating more than 800 clients of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies in tax havens. The documents demonstrate that as much as $2 billion has been shuffled through banks and offshore companies said to be linked to associates and friends of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s prime minister, is also facing allegations that he used an offshore vehicle to hide millions of dollars of investments in the country’s banks. Michael Cranston, Australia’s deputy tax commissioner, said on Monday that the Australian Tax Office had recently received data in relation to a Panamanian law firm containing the names of more than 800 Australian residents, and was “already taking action” in some cases.

Robert Barrington of Transparency International UK said: “The Panama Papers seem to confirm the evidence from elsewhere that the world’s corrupt elite are gaming the international financial system to launder and protect their stolen wealth.”

Colonel Richard Kemp told the Telegraph it is an "absolute certainty" that the UK would have to give troops towards an EU army that would undermine Nato and be very costly yet act like a "paper tiger". The move could even end Britain's ability to defend the Falkland Islands because decisions would have to be agreed by EU member states and could never win consensus, warned Colonel Richard, who is backing Brexit.

Colonel Richard Kemp said: “An EU army is inevitable. As the EU has declared, it is moving to ever closer union, it intendeds to become a fully fledged superstate. That's the plan. An EU army is a key part of that because it will be seen as both part of binding together an EU superstate and saving costs on duplication and overlaps.

“For Britain it would be catastrophic. Whatever the Prime Minister might say about not becoming part of ever closer union we will. We would essentially be giving up our right to sovereign self-defence. Control of the EU army would not rest with us but in a collective EU decision." He said an EU army will emerge “within 10 years” or “maybe even within five” and warned it would undermine Nato.

The Prime Minister warned that the dangers of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) getting hold of nuclear material was “only too real”. Mr Cameron on Friday met world leaders, including the presidents of America, France and China, to plan how they would react to such an attack.

Footage has reportedly emerged showing Isil using drones and the threat was deemed so serious that – in a highly unusual move – world leaders were asked to take part in war games to plan how they would respond.

One scenario, mapped out by US officials and presented at the special Nuclear Security Summit session in Washington DC, spelt out the danger in remarkable detail. It imagined radioactive material had been taken from a medical facility by “insiders” and sold to extremists through the internet’s secretive “dark web”.

This is something the former head of the Bank of England admitted one month ago when Mervyn King said that Europe's economic depression is the result of "deliberate" policy choices made by EU elites. It is also what AIG Banque strategist Bernard Connolly said back in 2008 when laying out "What Europe Wants".

To use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

• environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance

• terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance

• global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)

• EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

This morning we got another confirmation of how supernational organizations "plan" European crises in advance to further their goals, when Wikileaks published the transcript of a teleconference that took place on March 19, 2016 between the top two IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis - Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF's European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, the IMF Mission Chief for Greece.

In the transcript, the IMF staffers are caught on tape planning to tell Germany the organization would abandon the troika if the IMF and the commission fail to reach an agreement on Greek debt relief.

More to the point, the IMF officials say that a threat of an imminent financial catastrophe, as the Guardian puts it, is needed to force other players into accepting its measures such as cutting Greek pensions and working conditions, or as Bloomberg puts it, "considering a plan to cause a credit event in Greece and destabilize Europe."

Since the passage of emergency powers in May 1968, this basic principle has been continuously undermined. Nonetheless, a large-scale deployment of heavily armed soldiers on the streets of Germany, along the lines of operations currently being carried out in France and other countries, remains legally prohibited.

Not only right-wing politicians, but also the German army (Bundeswehr) itself is agitating for a constitutional amendment permitting the domestic deployment of the armed forces in cases of “threats from terrorism.” What this means can currently be seen in France. Just as the “war against terror” has served as the justification for one regime-change war after another, the “threat of terrorism” provides a blank check for the establishment of a police state.

The attacks by terrorist Islamists serve merely as the pretext for the militarisation of domestic policy. The real target is resistance and opposition from the working class. The ruling elites have seized on every opportunity for decades to do away with the legal hurdles preventing the deployment of the military against their own population.

The Federal Border Guard, which was previously only responsible for controlling the country’s borders, has been expanded into a federal police force, unifying military and police capabilities. Its role stretches from patrolling the external borders, to deployments against demonstrators, intelligence agency work and criminal prosecutions.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged Wednesday that there have been discussions within the Department of Justice about possibly pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers. "This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on," Lynch said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department operations.

Referring huge questions of science to a federal judge for adjudication is bad enough. That's what Judge John Jones did - a self-referral - in the 2005 Dover trial. From his Harrisburg, Philadelphia, courtroom, Jones took it on himself to decide the age-old question of whether nature gives evidence of design. "Referring" matters of scientific debate to the FBI takes the presumption of Judge Jones to a whole new and more sinister level.

As I've said before, one hesitates to give ideas to censors operating in other areas of scientific disagreement. But Darwinists are not shy about using power to silence dissent, nor do they lack inventiveness in seeking new ways to do so. It would be surprising if schemes like this haven't crossed their minds.