Whenever financial markets tremble, everyone thinks of 1929 and the great American stock exchange crash. But fewer market participants remember 1931, a more significant year in the story of the big 20th century economic collapse, the Great Depression.

Yet 1931 holds more lessons about the vulnerabilities in an age of globalisation. Threats to the system can originate in small and obscure places and do not necessarily come from the heart of the financial system.