“There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation — an ascent above the reach of life's vexations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgiving.”

Credit already faced a haunted baronet of spectres going into this month — the ghoulish dis-inversion of treasury curves, a message from beyond the grave of further US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes (along with lengthening dot plots), a headless horseman holding the reins of an overbought leveraged finance market, oil prices biting harder, and a growing suspicion that something nasty once again lurks under the floorboards of US housing.