That big grinding sound in the global economy is the emerging market world shifting down to a lower gear. The stream of news this year suggests that emerging economies are recording their lowest rates of growth since the global financial crisis.

Of course, EMs have weathered slowdowns and even crashes before, and generally come back strongly. More disturbing about the conjuncture is that the difficulty in generating strong growth seems as much structural as it does cyclical, suggesting that expansion will remain modest even if domestic policy is loosened and external conditions become more supportive. The structural weaknesses vary within the EM world, but they add up to a situation where getting growth over the next five years is a much bigger challenge than coping with the headwinds over the next few months.

Real growth is slowing in the EMs. The tracker run by the consultancy Capital Economics (see chart above) suggests that emerging economies are expanding at an annual rate of less than 4 per cent for the first time since 2009, and before that the first time since the 2001 US recession and the Argentine debt default.