Now the first month of this year has passed, it seems a good moment to stop and see what new things we have learned about the world and UK economies.

Have financial markets resolved to give up their bad habits for New Year? As office cleaners rushed to ensure festive decorations were down before the twelfth night of Christmas, it looked as if FDs were in for some luck.

A few years ago, Mervyn King said he wanted monetary policy to be boring. Whatever the merits of December’s cut in interest rates, the Bank of England has certainly failed that test.

The debate over the reforms to the capital gains tax regime is in danger of missing a key point. The real significance is not what they do but what they do not.

Finance directors standing on the shore of the credit market must feel a bit like bathers on Amity Island in the film Jaws, wondering if it’s safe to go back into the water after the last sighting of a shark turned out to be a hoax.

Like him or loathe him, Gordon Brown is the granddaddy of finance directors. His 10 years in the job as Chancellor of the Exchequer made him the longest serving finance minister since William Gladstone.

The issue of who owns your company used to be a simple matter. You had an overdraft or loan facility with your bank and your shareholders owned the equity.

When asked to describe the consequences of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai, a former leader of Communist China, is reputed to have replied: “It’s too early to say.” And so it is with Gordon Brown’s last Budget as chancellor.

I can recall watching a Tarzan film in which the great man is tied down on a beach. Eventually the rising water will bring a shoal of piranhas to inflict a particularly hideous death. It must feel a little like that being an FD.

“What if…?” is a question that can be heard in boardrooms all across the country. What if our marketing strategy fails? What if that strike in Venezuela sends copper prices soaring?