We toiling workers can allow ourselves a wry smile. For most of the last eight years the owners of wealth and inflated assets have had things their own way, while the real economy has been left behind.

The tables are finally turning. The world may look absolutely ghastly if your metric is the stock market, but it is much the same or slightly better if you are at the coal face.

The MSCI index of world equities has fallen almost 20pc since its all-time high in May of 2015, implying a $14 trillion loss of paper wealth. Yet the world economy has carried on at more or less the same anemic pace, and the OECD's global leading indicators show no sign that it is suddenly rolling over now.

World growth has been drearily stable for years, shuffling along at 3.4pc in 2012, 3.3pc in 2013, and 3.4pc in 2014, and 3.1pc in 2015. The International Monetary Fund expects 3.4pc this year.

The latest "GDPNow" tracker from the Atlanta Federal Reserve suggests that US growth is running at 2.5pc in the first quarter, smack in line with a typical late-cycle expansion in a mature economy.

So, at the risk of sticking my neck out a long way, let me suggest that the equity bloodbath this year is little more than noise in the particular set of circumstances facing us.