It was obviously even more unpleasant to contemplate than any kind of economic setback. But it seemed to me a pointless and unproductive kind of discussion. I could have answered “a 10 per cent chance”, “a 50 per cent chance”, or “an 80 per cent chance” with equal plausibility. I did not and could not know. Nor could anyone else. This kind of pointless crystal-gazing only deflected attention from a much more important question. This was: “Are we doing enough to reduce the probability of such a catastrophe?” By “we” I did not mean mankind in general but the government of the country in which I happened to live and was a citizen, namely the UK.

There are indeed parallels with the present economic outlook. I cannot claim to have foreseen the financial blow-out. But I did warn in my column of February 1 2008 of the danger of talking ourselves into a depression, and I wrote of the need to “buck up”. President Franklin Roosevelt put it more elegantly when he said: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

The most alarming feature at present is the fatalistic public mood. The slump is being discussed as if it were a natural catastrophe like the arrival of the comet that destroyed the dinosaurs. All the popular talk is of retrenchment, cutting down and spartan savings of all kinds. It should not take a genius to appreciate that such activities can only make the situation worse and aggravate a downward vicious spiral. I would be the last to argue that people should spend recklessly for patriotic reasons, but nor should they stint themselves.