Given the half-hearted attempts at reform of the financial system in the past year and the new resolve of many west European governments and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the United States to push through fiscal austerity, one can make two sets of forecasts of the global economy: (1) The next several years will see slow and erratic economic growth in the US, much of Europe, and Japan, and quite possibly a widespread "double dip" recession. (2) The next decade will see at least one major financial crisis affecting a large part of the world economy, because (a) the effort to re-regulate the financial system has largely failed; (b) income distribution will continue to become more polarised, with the top 1% lifting further from the median; (c) global payments imbalances will continue at levels where the associated capital flows keep the level of financial fragility dangerously high.