Having faced not one financial car crash but several in less than a generation, it is little wonder today’s risk-takers, investors, households and corporates alike, are sticking rather than twisting, saving not spending, braking not accelerating, their animal spirits anaesthetised. Although collectively damaging, this is the individually prudent thing to do. We are facing a twenty-first-century ‘paradox of thrift’, whose psychological scars might easily persist as long as those of its twentieth-century counterpart. The upstream effects of this reduced risk-taking can be clearly seen in the damped dynamism and caged animal spirits of both businesses and households. In the words of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, the forces of ‘creative destruction’ have been significantly and persistently diminished by the sequence of crises, stunting innovation, enterprise and hence the dynamism of our economies. For businesses, those caged animal spirits have manifested themselves in reduced numbers of firms entering and, just as importantly, exiting the market. Entry and exit rates for UK firms are around a third lower today than at the time of the GFC. Entrepreneurs are more fearful of starting new businesses, despite them being the wellspring of innovation and jobs.