Complacent regulators have two years to prevent a financial crash

Outside Brexit Britain, the view looks rosy and borrowing is being pushed to new highs. What could go wrong? Almost everything

There is a complacency in the air as we stumble into 2018. Global economic forecasts are coated with sugar. Stock markets keep heading skywards and borrowing is at an all-time high. Brexit may be a brick through the window of the UK's economic outlook, but for the rest of the developed world, the view is decidedly rosy.

Such is the exuberance among those with plenty of spare cash that there is a return of borrowing with the sole purpose of betting on stock market gains. To this end, investors are using any asset to hand - their house, their pension or their deposit savings - to get a boost from the alpha funds that promise stellar returns. Bitcoin is another feature of this relaxed attitude to risk. Who needs safety nets when there is no prospect of a fall? It's not hard to see why the picture looks so rosy and why it is likely to conclude with an ugly denouement.

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