Last year’s collapse in global economic activity differed in pace and scale from any previous recession. Equally the recovery, now well established in most economies, will be unlike anything we have seen before. Almost every post-war major economy recession has been triggered either by a tightening of monetary policy in response to a period of overheating, or by the bursting of a financial market bubble. The UK recessions of the early 80s and the early 90s fall into the first…