If you chart the occurrence of the phrases “credit crunch” and “eurozone” in newspaper articles over the past four years, the lines form a neat “X”. “Credit crunch” appeared nearly 190,000 times in 2008 but only 30,000 times this year; “eurozone” has gone from just 30,000 appearances in 2008 to over a quarter of a million mentions this year. It is a clear – if somewhat crude – illustration of how the world’s economic woes have teleported from the private to the public sphere.

Throughout 2011, the markets have marched to a macro drumbeat with the most forceful tempo provided by the protracted wrangling over Europe's sovereign debt crisis. This was the year in which the term "credit default swap" entered the mainstream lexicon, yields on Italian 10-year debt were often found trending on the social media site Twitter and the financial crisis morphed into a political one.