Investors stockpile cash to offset economic despair (NIRP BACKFIRING IN YET ANOTHER WAY)

But that economic theory is not playing out. A couple of weeks ago, for example, the US Association for Financial Professionals published a survey of corporate treasurers. This suggests that, far from becoming cash-averse, they are planning to increase rather than decrease their holdings of cash this summer. Indeed, they are more enthusiastic about cash than at any point since 2011.

A separate survey of investors from Bank of America Merrill Lynch echoes this point. In July the world's biggest asset managers said they had 5.8 per cent of their assets in cash. The level has been rising this year and now stands at its highest point since November 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Remark­ably, it even tops cash holdings during the post-Lehman panic in 2008.

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Ominously, investors are disoriented by the actions of central banks. One of the most fascinating details of the Merrill Lynch survey, for example, is that there has recently been a jump in the proportion of participants who expect that "at least one central bank" will introduce "helicopter money"-- meaning it will hand out cash in a desperate bid to boost prices -- in the next year. Indeed 39 per cent of respondents expect this. To put it another way, asset managers fear the policy landscape is about to become even weirder. That is yet another reason for fear.