THE ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS of investors and market watchers has been converted into advanced paranoia by the business media’s preference for bad news. Consider this headline in the Wall Street Journal: “Economy’s Surge Stirs Questions About When Slowdown May Come”.

Share prices are driven to a six-year high by rising corporate profits and commentators trot out stories about bubbles and irrational exuberance, the latter a phrase used by then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan to describe share prices–after which they doubled. Germany and Japan finally shake off their decades-long economic lethargy and show signs of recovery, and all talk is that, like rising share prices, this will force a recession-inducing rise in world interest rates.