John Maynard Keynes - the founder of macroeconomics - had a clear warning after World War I: economic extremes will lead to political extremes.

His warning - published in his essay The Economic Consequences of the Peace - was prophetic, to say the least.

He warned that the German economy was in tatters at the end of World War I and that the reparations being forced on Germany by the war's victors would cause so much economic hardship that extreme political leaders would emerge in Germany, possibly causing another war.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The world, thankfully, is nowhere near those extremes today. But we are on a dangerous path.

Around the world, we are seeing economic extremes fuelling political extremes, and it would be dangerously complacent and naive to think it i

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