The bad smell hovering over the global economy

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Then there's the US. Here there are two problems -- one glaringly apparent, the other lurking in the shadows. The overt weakness is that real incomes continue to be squeezed, despite the fall in unemployment. Americans are finding that wages are barely keeping pace with prices, and that the amount left over for discretionary spending is being eaten into by higher rents and medical bills.

For a while, consumer spending was kept going because rock-bottom interest rates allowed auto dealers to offer tempting terms to those of limited means wanting to buy a new car or truck. In an echo of the subprime real estate crisis, vehicle sales are now falling... Companies have exploited the Federal Reserve's low interest-rate regime to load up on debt they don't actually need.

"The proceeds of this debt raising are then largely reinvested back into the equity market via M&A or share buybacks in an attempt to boost share prices in the absence of actual demand," Lapthorne says. "The effect on US non-financial balance sheets is now starting to look devastating."

He adds that the trigger for a US corporate debt crisis would be falling share prices, something that might easily be caused by the Fed increasing interest rates.

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Europe's big problem, over and above the fact that the euro was a disastrously flawed concept, is that the banking system is not fit for purpose. As the IMF noted last week, a third of eurozone banks have no prospect of being profitable without urgent and meaningful reform. That requires two things: to reduce the number of banks and to do something about the €900bn (£715bn) of bad loans sitting on their books at the end of 2014.

There is no immediate prospect of either happening, which makes it much harder for Draghi to get any traction with his stimulus package. The plan is that negative interest rates and quantitative easing will increase the incentives for eurozone commercial banks to lend more. The banking system, however, is badly impaired and the normal channels for creating credit are blocked.