That it is foolish to overlook the risks associated with globalised market economies in which much of the world's savings are now invested has been graphically illustrated over the last 48 hours. Stock markets in China lost nine per cent of their worth on Tuesday - the biggest decline in a decade - affecting US and European markets, not least in Dublin where values fell by some €4 billion in one day.
Yesterday's partial recovery makes it difficult to gauge whether this is a blip or a trend. Trading remained volatile but US investors, for their part, appeared to take some heart from soothing comments by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke who predicted that moderate US economic growth would continue. Nevertheless, the international feeding frenzy of fear, remarked upon by one analyst, tells a story of potential vulnerability that has been obscured by recent seemingly untroubled growth.
Distinctively, in keeping with China's recent role as the world's economic engine driver, events there got caught up with bad quarterly US manufacturing figures, remarks about the possibility of a recession by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and rumours about mines in South Africa. Nor did it help that someone tried to bomb Dick Cheney in Kabul. Such unexpected connections are typical of shifts in market sentiment, when rational and random facts get combined.
That they started in China is a trend just as much as the assumed irreversibility of that country's recent growth. China is now so much a part of the capitalist world - economically if not politically - that the laws of boom and bust apply there too and affect everybody else involved.
It is too soon to say this is the beginning of a longer-term trend. Economic and market fundamentals point in different directions and are subject to conflicting analysis and advice. Corrections are to be expected. Whatever the outcome, however, the Dublin market remains exposed to it. Savers and pension holders are thereby sharply advised not to take indefinite growth for granted. This jolt is salutary and should alert them to the need for prudent management and precautionary measures. Local property markets please note.
In world terms, huge and growing US trade and budgetary deficits arise from the unbalanced relationship between the US, on one hand, and China and other Asian markets on the other. Neither side is minded politically to upset it. But after this downturn, the marketplace will be more aware that this situation is unsustainable in the long run.