The world is on a bumpy journey to a new destination and the New Normal.

If you happen to be the only one with negative interest rates, you also weaken your currency, which means you make your exports more competitive.

The once-unthinkable loss of the AAA rating will constitute a further hit to already fragile business and consumer confidence.

The world changes! So we're in a situation today where the only policymakers that have flexibility are central banks. But they don't have the instruments! So they've had to experiment, and the more you experiment, the more uncertainty and the higher the risk of collateral damage.

Once you start moving [market] lower, then you trigger of all sorts of things. You trigger people who have to sell because they're over-levered. So they sell their winners and their losers. They're just trying to raise cash. So, what you then get is spreading malaise throughout the global markets.

It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S & P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery.

Most people are under exposed to global assets, including foreign stocks, bonds and currencies.