Prior to the financial crisis of 2007-09, the Bank for International Settlements made itself unpopular with monetary authorities around the world by pointing to the risks being created by accommodative monetary policies, excessive leverage, high asset prices and a lack of transparency. These warnings were ignored. The result was a calamitous financial crisis, which not only caused a huge recession, but has also bequeathed a legacy of high public debt and populist politics.

Once again, the BIS is sounding the alarm. It has expressed concern over fiscal and financial risks for some time. But only last week, its general manager, Pablo Hernández de Cos, former governor of the Bank of Spain, delivered a sobering account of “fiscal threats in a changing global financial system”.

He starts from the fact that ratios of sovereign debt to GDP in many advanced economies are at post-second world war highs. In the absence of an artificial intelligence-fuelled acceleration in economic growth, there is good reason to believe these will continue to rise. The reasons include the possibility of further economic shocks (including yet another financial crisis), higher yields on government bonds, ageing populations, hostility to immigration, an evident unwillingness to bear the political pain of curbing fiscal deficits and many other pressures, notably towards more spending on defence.