As citizens and businesses we are living in an unusually dangerous and distorted world. I am not talking about whether it is wise to go to Egypt on holiday , or the fact that in Scotland we live in a one party state but about the economic backdrop in which as citizens we live our lives and as businesses try to make profitable progress.

Many of these dangers and distortions are created by governments and central bankers trying to keep the show on the road for the voting public. The media go along with this mass reassurance plan and , it helps that in the UK we actually have some economic growth . So why does everything feel for many of our citizens, bluntly, fairly lousy ?

The overarching problem is that from roughly the mid 1980’s to 2007 we stole growth from the future by borrowing excessively. Not every person and not every country - but most of us - and we loved it. The period of growth which the UK enjoyed up to 2007 was the longest since the Industrial Revolution, it felt normal but it wasn’t. The result is that we have too much debt. A staggeringly horribly huge amount of debt, the deflationary effect of which threatened, and still threatens, to destabilise the modern economic world as we know it.

The authorities’ response, to stave off deflation, has been to make money essentially free. Interest rates are so paltry they are really just an admin charge. This therapy has kept the economic patient alive but, unsurprisingly because it is free, debt levels worldwide have grown not shrunk. Stock markets are significantly higher than they were in 2008 as investors search frantically for yield. London house prices have been driven to absurd levels - the house my son rents - which looks like it is from Coronation Street - is apparently “worth” over £1 million. Of course it is not worth that sum but that is its current price in the bubble which has been created. Savers meanwhile have little to show for years of thrift - if you are 65 a pension pot of £500,000 will buy you an inflation protected annual income of less than £15,000 - the longest cruise you can afford will be to Rothesay. After the initial relief of falling interest rates consumers face the harsh reality that their real wages have gone nowhere for nearly 10 years, their costs are rising and they must save more to get less in terms of pension.

Signs of stress in the financial markets are there for all to see - just look at the overreaction upwards by the Japanese Yen and downwards by the Japanese stock market last week when the Central Bank of Japan decided to do absolutely nothing. Confidence is fragile and well it should be because the authorities are running out of ammo - each dose of heroin has less and less effect. The central bankers sit in a petrol soaked room fiddling with their lighters and hoping for a little bit of inflation. There is a significant danger that what we will eventually get is an awful lot of inflation.

What to do? I suggest two things. As an individual, over the next five years perhaps focus on preserving the value of your savings in real terms rather than trying to obtain significant gains. As a company be wary of borrowing against the value of fixed assets and if you do borrow have a good look at interest rate hedging - in the recent past that has been a waste of money so it has fallen out of favour - just the time to have a re-think.

Pinstripe is a senior member of Scotland's financial services community