Many many years ago, in a lecture hall at Aston University, the guy we all knew as "Cuddly Duddly" Jackson introduced me to a Russian called Kondratieff.

Not personally you understand - he explained the subject of economic long wave cycles, (don't nod off - it gets better) and I acquired a lifelong interest in economic cycles, chartism and investment forecasting.

My first big success, was the house I live in now, bought for £80000 at the bottom of the 87 house market crash, having sold my 2 up 2 down cottage not too far from the top of that market, and rented for 2 years while the market fell around me. Slightly interested now?

Kondratieff was a Russian economist who in the 1930's studied the US stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression. His brief was to demonstrate it proved the validity of Karl Marx theory and spelt the ultimate collapse of Capitalism. He discovered it showed nothing of the sort, and was a regular 70 year feature of economic boom and bust going back to at least the South Sea Bubble in 1720. (Another book I have can trace the pattern back 1000 years before that - although clearly with less precision). Since this was the wrong answer, he was sent to the salt mines.

However, there is a fair chance it was the right answer, and at the end of the millenium the worlds economy snagged its cardie on the protruding nail of Tech stocks, and looked poised for a Kondratieff downwave. Until first Alan Greenspan gave us the "Greenspan put", then bouncing Ben Bernanke (with his sidekick Merv the swerve King) gave us the most famous Cunard liner, and finally Super Mario (Draghi) stepped in to hold the deck of cards up in the Eu platform game.

Maybe, just maybe (to mix my metaphors) gravity has final caught up. And nobody has any more darning needles left as the cardie unravels. The financial markets look really interesting just now.

And it is a famous Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"