Beware September: five cautionary tales from economic history

From the South Sea Bubble to the undoing of Trussonomics, this month of the year keeps providing lessons

Be afraid. That's the message from history to policymakers returning from holiday this week as they contemplate negotiating the trickiest few weeks of them all.

For while TS Eliot called April the cruellest month in The Waste Land, in economics and finance that unwanted label would better be attached to September, the time of the year - from the 18th century to the modern day - when problems that have been quietly developing over the summer come to a head.