The UK is in dire economic straits. There needs to be a shift in the Bank of England’s quantitative easing policy to buy the government time and fund a British development bank.

Faced with an unpalatable menu of policy choices, there is concern that another course will be taken: financial repression. It is the economic prescription favoured by Fagin. Bondholders should beware.

The economies of developed nations are now dangerously dependent on consumption funded by debt to spur growth. Turning the clock back to make do and mend won’t be painless but it is both inevitable and long overdue.

The flurry of deals among stock exchanges is a fight for relevance in a world in which regulation and technology have lowered barriers to entry. It is a battle the London Stock Exchange lost many years ago.

Three months before the start of the credit crunch in 2007 this column predicted that the IPO of Blackstone Group marked the “endgame for private equity”. With Glencore listing in London there might be good reasons to call time on the commodities bubble.

The decision by Standard & Poor’s to place the US on credit watch with a “negative outlook” is a watershed. With politicians unwilling to attack spiralling welfare costs, a bond crisis might be just around the corner.

Investment consultants are taking a leaf from Madonna’s playbook and reinventing themselves. Implemented consultancy is causing a commotion but it is far from clear who the winners will be.

Goldman Sachs’s Gary Cohn thinks hedge funds, not banks, are likely to cause the next financial crisis. He needs to take a long hard stare in the looking glass.

Affluenza has caught a cold. Those hoping to piggyback off an ever expanding middle-class piggybank should take due note.

During the financial crisis big became synonymous with bad. But in pensions management super-sizing can seriously increase your wealth.

Pension funds are slashing their allocations to equities and reorienting their portfolios to more accurately match liabilities. Strategically that makes sense. Tactically it smacks of buying at the top and it is already creating distortions in markets.

The Saga of Iceland’s involvement in the financial crisis has elements of tragedy and farce. But it would be unwise to underestimate this nation of warriors, poets and volcanoes.

If central banks want to become macro prudential regulators, identifying asset price bubbles is necessary but not sufficient.

Currency debasement and inflation have ultimately been bad news for men of modest means. Lincoln Rathnam learns lessons from the history of Emperor Diocletian on why our present penchant for McMansions might point to an Appalachian future.

The euro will survive. But the self-preservation instinct of its architects must mean the defenestration of Greece.

The ties that bind sovereign issuers and investors are intricate and complex. With sovereign defaults a real and present danger, they should be untangled before it is too late.

Defined benefit pensions are rapidly being supplanted by defined contribution plans, especially in the UK and US. However, it is increasingly clear that many DC schemes are not fit for purpose.

The notion that “you can’t time the market” has somehow become received wisdom. It is, of course, nonsense. The experience of two very British institutions and some data analysis reveals the truth behind the cant.

Professional investment managers and their clients may have given themselves an impossible goal of generating superior short-term returns.

Reports of life in the barbarous relic have been greatly exaggerated.

The financial crisis might be the making of hedge funds. Institutional investors will change the industry for the better by demanding onshore structures, independent administration and greater transparency. Mainstream financial centres should see this as an opportunity and ditch the fatuous parts of proposed regulation.

In the Greek myth, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods forever to push a rock uphill only for it to roll back down. This is a familiar fate for those seduced by the cult of equity investing.

Policymakers like to talk up the dollar. But an orderly decline of the greenback would be no bad thing.

In July this column read the last rites over some unexpected victims of the crisis. Happily, some deaths have been greatly exaggerated while other parts of the economy and markets are due for a renaissance.

There are foxy footprints all over current policy choices. But cunning plans and clever innovations have a nasty habit of unravelling and causing greater pain than choosing the straightforward course.

The credit crunch and recession will reshape finance and markets in some surprising ways.

Quantitative easing is being hailed as a policy panacea. The problem is that it sounds a lot like a prescription that causes the very problems it is designed to treat.

David Ricardo’s counsel of despair on the fate of the working man should also give investors food for thought, writes Lincoln Rathnam.

People wanted to believe ponzmeister Madoff because they crave stable, compounding returns. After his spectacular fall from grace, calls to shine a light on the opaque world of hedge funds will be irresistible.

The current economic crisis exposes gaps at the heart of European policymaking. They will only widen as eurozone countries and the ECB grapple with the prospect of quantitative easing.