The title of this post is taken from two sources. One was a headline in British tabloid, The Sun, in January 1979, when then-prime minister James Callaghan denied that strike-torn Britain was in chaos. The second was the title of a 1975 album by prog rock band Supertramp that famously showed someone sunbathing amidst the grey awfulness of the declining industrial landscape.

Are we now getting blasé about the latest crisis? Not so long ago, perfectly respectable economists and financial analysts were talking about a new Great Depression. The world was on the brink, it was said. Now, though, consensus appears to be that it is all over bar the shouting. The world is safe.

Wealth managers at Barclays have gone as far as telling their clients to get over it.

Move past the crisis .... The past year's events were deeply traumatic for most investors, but now is the time to move on, and take a more "business as usual" approach ...."

Such bullishness may not be comforting to the record numbers of jobless in parts of the world, but it is bordering on consensus. It is left to the likes of perma-bears such as  Nouriel Roubini to try to burst the bubble of optimism on which many are floating. The economist began one of his latest articles bluntly:

Think the worst is over? Wrong.

Roubini's main point is that unemployment is likely to get worse rather than better and that many U.S. jobs that have been lost will not come back.

Now, there can obviously be a disconnect between markets and economics, but the former tends to be based on assumptions about the latter. So which is right? Are we out of the woods? Or should Supertramp be firing up their keyboards again?

The Dutch investment bank ING reckons talk of Americans rediscovering savings is misleading.

Households are slashing their purchases of financial assets. The savings ratio is rising because borrowing is falling even more rapidly.   The household savings ratio climbed to 6.9 percent in May, up from a low point of 0.4 percent in 2005. But their purchases of financial assets plunged to -0.5 percent of income in the first quarter (the most recent data), down from a recent peak of 21.6 percent in 2004.

Given this, it will be more than interesting to see the second quarter figures, which should reflect most of the March to June global equity rally. But until then, what do you think? Is the "Americans are saving" mantra misleading?

Emily Kaiser adds:

Jeff Frankel at Harvard has an interesting take on this theme. He's arguing it's the end of the global savings glut. Chairman Bernanke, if you're reading this, what do you say to that?

Judging from the draft communique of the G8 leaders meeting in L'Aquila, no one is in a particular hurry to talk about ending the domination of the dollar in world  currency reserves.  Our correspondents at the Italian summit report that the debate being pushed by China and others is likely to be played down.

But the genie is out of the bottle. Beforehand, Beijing floated the idea of alternative to the dollar. Russia and Brazil weighed in with some thoughts. The United Nations also acknowledged earlier this year the desire of some countries for a "more efficient reserve system" in a series of proposals for global financial reform.

This issue is laid out in a Q&A here.

What do you think? Is it time to ditch the dollar? Is it doomed as a reserve currency over the long term?

Readers of MacroScope who live in the northern hemisphere will be gearing up for some summer reading.

James Montier, the market psychologist who is also an equity analyst at Societe Generale, has come up with his annual recomendations of what to read. The full list is here, but for the current economic and market crisis he has this to offer:

My favourite book in this category is Bill Fleckenstein’s ‘Greenspan’s Bubbles’ -- an excellent exposé of incompetence during Alan Greenspan's tenure as Fed Chairman. The next choice in this group is Whitney Tilson and Glen Tongue’s ‘More Mortgage Meltdown’. This book explains clearly how we ended up in this mess (and is based on the authors -- real time experience), and an added bonus is the insight into Tilson's investment process provided by the case studies. My final choice in this section is Jim Grant’s ‘Mr. Market Miscalculates’. I've mentioned this excellent book before, and I believe it deserves a place on all investors' bookshelves.

Montier got MacroScope thinking. There must be many more crisis books, or related ones, that are worthy of a read as the summer rolls in. How about John Kenneth Galbraith's 'The Great Crash, 1929' or Tom Wolfe's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', which still has one of the best descriptions ever of how bond traders make money.

So let's have your suggestions. What should you read to mark the crisis?

In much the same way that analysts have been debating whether equities are in a bear market rally or a new bull market, economists now have to deal with the question of whether the global economy is just bottoming out or is now actually recovering. The two things are obviously linked as BlackRock equities chief Bob Doll indicated when he said this week that equity markets will require the economic backdrop to actually improve rather than simply grow less bad if rises are to be sustained.

The less-dreadful-than-feared syndrome has been around for some time. U.S. markets, for example, found themselves cheering the loss of  539,000 jobs in April simply because its was the smallest since October and looked to be an improvement.

But talk of green shoots, a somewhat overused euphemism for the start of economic revival, has also been on the increase: European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet spoke on Monday about the pick-up in GDP evident in certain areas; China said its efforts to boost growth were working; and a lot of institutional investors are acting as if the worst is over.

So, bottoming out or on the way up?  Comments below please.

(Reuters photo: Danish Ishmail)

Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 meet this weekend in the English countryside to discuss the world's financial and economic crisis. With this in mind, MacroScope asked a number of economists what they want to see from the meeting and the G20 summit to follow later and what they expect to see.

The answer, in short, appears to be that much is needed but not much expected.

Paul Mortimer-Lee, head of market economics, BNP Paribas:

"There will be progress on agreeing that regulation needs to be more effective and more effectively co-ordinated on a global scale but I am unconvinced we are going to go a long way further.  Some populist posturing on bank bonuses etc should be expected. The less is achieved in other areas the more this will get played up. On bank recapitalisation, they will all agree strong capital is a good thing, but in no way do I expect a concerted plan -- it's driven by events and the exigencies of the local banking system.

"I would like to see progress on the international financial architecture/the IMF and its resources. Maybe we'll get some new facility and some agreement on more new cash ... but a radical overhaul requires the power structure to be rejigged -- more power to the (emerging economies) and less to Europe. This is not something European politicians will want to be high profile when it comes out."

Sarah Hewin, senior economist, Standard Chartered:

"The economic data continue to worsen and markets remain in a state of fear. So the best outcome from the meeting would be a co-ordinated response to frozen credit markets and collapsing global economic activity.

"A wish-list would include announcements on: fixing banking systems, including cleaning up banks’ balance sheets by dealing with toxic assets; more and co-ordinated fiscal stimulus and wider adoption of quantitative easing; expanding the size of the IMF to enable it to support vulnerable countries; and commitments against protectionism.

"But the experience of previous summits is not encouraging - apart from increasing IMF resources and making the right noises on protectionism, we are likely to see few real progressive steps taken."

Gabriel Stein, director, Lombard Street Research:

"The G20 meeting, like almost all summits, is a waste of time. Most of the work will have been done beforehand and the actual meeting could just as well be delegated to functionaries. Its main purpose is political.

"It will issue a bland communiqué telling us that they agree on the need for further reforms and oversight of the world financial system, but that while co-ordination is useful, the actual details are better left to each country/region with its specific issues and problems. It will also warn against protectionism."

Alessandro Bee, economist, Bank Sarasin:

"I would like them to come up with a plan to solve the credit crisis, a coordinated plan. Also apowerful plan with some clear-cut strategies. What we see now is more like a series of individual plans that sometmes materialse and sometimes not.

"I would expect some annoucements rather than real decisions.*

So that's them. What about you? What do you want to see and what do you expect to see?

(Reuters photo: Peter MacDiarmid)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a name. We are living through "The Great Recession". Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, used the term to describe our current angst on a trip to Africa this week. He may not have been the first to use it -- we have found other citations, including JPMorgan -- but the guessing here is that it may  stick with him because of his role.

It's a pretty neat moniker, actually. It resonates, of course, with "Great Depression" but without the soup lines and Hoovervilles. At the same time, it differentiates between the severe contraction now under way and run-of-the-mill economic misery. It also has the snappiness that media folks like -- hence this post.

The Bretton Woods duo of IMF and World Bank have been underlining how bad things are. Strauss-Kahn, for example, tells Reuters that delays in bank restructuring could mean economic recovery is not on the cards even in 2010 (which sounds a long way off, but is only next year). Then comes Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, who opines to Britain's Daily Mail that global growth will probably fall about 1 to 2 percent this year.

Not that any of this is particularly surprising to economists. Reuters polled around 250 of them in the past week or so and found expectations of a 1.4 percent contraction in the U.S. economy this year, a 2.6 percent one in the euro zone and a 4.0 percent one in Japan over its next fiscal year.

So "Great Recession" it appears to be. Unless you think otherwise, in which case, suggestions below, please.

(Reuters photo: Dylan Martinez)