Gordon Brown’s infamous slip of the tongue gave the House of Commons a rare moment of laughter in the depths of the financial crisis.

Overstating his case, the then-Prime Minister claimed in December 2008 to have “saved the world”, before correcting himself to merely saving the banking system – RBS had just been bailed out following its extraordinary implosion.

But the world economy really did need saving, and G20 leaders pledged “vigorous efforts” to support the financial system and spend heavily “to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect”.

Interest rates were slashed to rock-bottom. Quantitative easing (QE) went from a fringe policy idea to a regular flow of hundreds of billions of dollars created to stimulate the economy.

China came to the rescue, seizing the opportunity to take the lead on the global stage, spending the equivalent of more than half a trillion dollars with the promise of boosting global demand. Borrowing globally went through the roof. Subsequent years were full of recriminations and painful deficit reduction programmes.

Now, global economies are once again in a dire position on the back of coronavirus, chaos in supply chains, surging prices and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But this time around, who is there to save the world economy?

A decade after the financial crisis, Covid-struck governments once again spent like mad, facing an unanticipated crisis of a bigger scale than the credit crunch. Central banks had less ammunition, generally having struggled to peel interest rates off the floor, but managed to take rates to new lows while firing up QE with renewed enthusiasm.

The hope was that this could result in a fresh boom, kicking the economy out of its post-financial crisis boom and into a new roaring twenties. Yet chaos in supply chains held back the recovery, then energy prices surged and finally Putin attacked Ukraine, sending oil and gas into overdrive and sparking a cost of living crisis in much of the rest of the world.