After the Group of 20 meeting in Toronto and the passage of the US Financial Reform Bill, global economic recovery ought by rights to be in the bag. Yet the reality is otherwise. Like the fabled plane in the second world war, the global economy is limping along on a wing and a prayer, not least because the world's debtor and creditor countries cannot agree on the way out of the present bind. In the meantime the financial system remains perilously fragile.

The onset of the Greek sovereign debt drama and the renewed funding difficulties of European banks has taken the crisis into new and challenging territory where, to change the metaphor, there is precious little left in the policymakers' locker. As the newly published annual report from the Bank for International Settlements points out, Greece highlights the possibility that heavily indebted governments may not be able to act as buyers of last resort to save banks in a new crisis. If the debt of the government itself becomes unmarketable, the BIS adds, any future bail-out of the banking system would have to rely on external help. Yet where will the help come from?

Surely not from Germany, where taxpayer patience has already been exhausted after the €750bn ($914bn) “shock and awe” package for southern Europe. Whatever becomes of Angela Merkel's troubled coalition, it is a safe bet that German policymakers will show little appetite for further public sector stimulus. Since those same policymakers seem to think they can export their way out of trouble while simultaneously demanding that their trading partners don a fiscal hair shirt, the prognosis for the eurozone looks dismal. The financial orthodoxy of the 1930s is back with a vengeance.