Earlier this month I participated in one of the big modern rituals of US finance – the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, created two decades ago by Michael Milken, the former “junk bond king”.

As usual, the event was a hubbub of brisk networking and commentary on the state of the markets. The mood was exuberant: money is cheap right now, the deal market is booming and the global economy is growing. In fact, the last time I saw so much optimism at the conference was in early 2007 (not a particularly comforting comparison).

Aside from the markets chatter, there was another notable feature at the Milken event: laughter. Almost every time a financier arrived on stage, he – and the very occasional she – cracked a joke. So did politicians and policy makers. Indeed, the humour was so ubiquitous that it began to act as punctuation; without a joke here and there, a panel debate did not feel quite right.