The double-dip danger for credit

In 1980, Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker raised US interest rates to almost 20% to fight hyperinflation. The result was a second dip into recession, causing unemployment to hit its highest levels since the Great Depression. Thirty years later, rates have stayed low but economists fear the second trough of a double-dip following the recent financial crisis.

You could be forgiven for thinking the buds of an economic recovery in the back half of 2009, and the rally in bond and equity prices t