'Encouraged by a wicked wizard, Greenspan, Bernanke toils at his printing press'

  Popular fiction is a particular fascination; I believe it provides a mind map of the social conscience. The Wizard of Oz is a personal favourite. I would contend that bullish markets produce feel-good films, like Disney animation; that bear markets produce depictions of horror and foreboding (think Hammer House of Horror in the 1970s and SAW, its modern equivalent); and that social mood is linked to stock market patterns.

The original Frank Baum story was written as a political allegory of America's entry on to the gold standard in 1879. The strictures of sound money coincided with a vibrant post Civil War economy. The result was deflation: prices fell by 1.7pc pa between 1875 and 1896. The farmer, as depicted by the scarecrow, was held captive by falling agricultural prices and mortgages owed to the big banks, the wicked witch of the east. The spell of tight monetary policy cast a pall over the poor tin woodsman: every time he swung his axe, he chopped off part of his body. It was a depiction of the economy's shuttered and rusting factories.

The easy-money crowd, Bernanke and Greenspan's great grandfathers perhaps, argued the responsibility for the economy's woes lay with an insufficient monetary response. The gold market had a scarcity that choked the US economy into serfdom.
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