‘Last week’s ‘panic-sell’ advice from one of Australia’s many purveyors of emailed stockmarket wisdom had no evident impact on an ASX that remained buoyantly near its peak. ‘The time to panic is before the mob wakes up that the over-confident market is living on borrowed time’. So how appropriate is the timing of the latest Chicken Little falling sky warning? Is China’s coronavirus the pin that pricks the market bubble, not only because of its own direct impact, but by focussing attention on the riskiness of a debt-laden world?

Despite the virus having a real economic impact far beyond China and...