Its been a very disappointing week so far. There may be a feeling that green shoots are about to spring up, but nobody is backing it with heavy money.

Just a question of waiting, I guess. And it might be as well to reflect on the fact that those green shoots might not be quite so healthy as I thought they might be. There is still a feeling that debt in the world, and especially in the UK, is still out there. People, firms and the government all owe a lot of money.

That is not a healthy situation. And yet we were borrowing money like there was no tomorrow on credit cards and personal loans a year or so ago and nobody cared much then. In fact, all the borrowing helped the consumer boom on its merry way.

The difference, of course, is that now we are worried by that debt, and we werent before. This shows how weak human understanding can be. If there are no warning signs voiced, then we carry on regardless. When the whole of the media finally realises that debt is a bad thing and starts shouting about it, then the credit crunch happens.

Its all a question of confidence isnt it? And because the confidence in this case is collective, rather than individual, nobody, but nobody can control it. We cant build confidence as individuals or even as governments. We can do nothing except hope that it gathers strength again.

One thing is sure, confidence is harder to build up than knock down. It takes years to build an expectation that share prices will continue to rise and seconds to destroy the whole pack of cards. We just have to wait for better times gang. We cant speed them along. But I can tell they will come. Thats how the world economy works. Rocking on.