Which of the following scary facts would you say is the scariest?

One: the total amount of debt in the world today exceeds the level it peaked at during the financial crisis.

Two: the amount being lent to the most speculative borrowers — leveraged loans, as they’re called — has broken through its pre-crisis peak.

Difficult choice, right? And not in a good way. After all, both nuggets, published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this week, seem to point in the same direction. We are heading back to the bad old days, and most of the world doesn’t seem to have noticed.

These are hardly the only nerve-racking titbits out there. We are also well overdue a recession; after all, we tend to get