PS – yes there will be a prize for the first person to identify all ten hits from the 2010s sprinkled through this week’s TOTCs.

There’s a positive case for the 2010s that can be made on a global level, but our national new year’s resolution should be to wake me up from the long stagnation. And if you haven’t sorted your own new year’s resolution yet, don’t worry – you can join the army . Or, for those with a higher risk appetite, Downing Street .

But the economic history business isn’t as tough as the predictions game. So this week we’re scraping back the soil Pompeii-style with a first pass at the economic history of the 2010s. For someone like you, interested enough to subscribe to TOTCs, the danger is we treat things as normal that are anything but. So this five chart history hopefully reminds us quite how exceptional the 2010s were. A decade of economic stagnation and stasis meant slow growth and less economic volatility too. Political volatility more than filled the gap.

Of course it’s more complicated than that. Yes the start of the 2020s is far from a fresh start, but it’s really hard to know what this decade will bring. Maybe you’ll get lucky and report back in 2030 that “we found love”. Or maybe not. Maybe a global economic recovery will turn up before a major recession or major war. Or maybe not.

Happy new decade. It’s been a bit of a shock returning to work today. The end of slow daytime drinking is tough, but especially when combined with the realisation that our personal (emails), national (rubbish growth) and international (Trump) traumas have crept across the space time continuum into the 2020s.