Stephen King of HSBC is one economist who knows how to draw the readers’ eye. “Oil is the new Greece,” declared his strategy note to the bank’s clients yesterday.

The thesis is simple. Just as anxieties over a potential disorderly default by Greece have abated, so a new threat to our fragile economic recovery has emerged in the form of a surging oil price. With crude at $125 a barrel, the dangers here are easy for us all to visualise: from furious truckers blocking British roads to riots abroad as inflation runs away across the emerging world. Yet accurately predicting the course of events here – and the possible repercussions – is hugely difficult. Maybe even trickier than predicting the Greek outcome, which should help to underline the true uncertainty here.

For a start, there’s a debate to be had on why prices are actually rising right now, with the price of oil up about 16 per cent year to date. Geopolitical tensions in and around Iran are a handy news peg but there’s also the little matter of quantitative easing happening across Europe, the UK, the US and also Japan. As Mr King notes, if the supply of paper money is constantly being increased, its value will fall relative to other stores of value, such as oil – even if certain central bankers insist there is no linkage between QE and rising commodity prices generally.