This time last year the Federal Reserve flicked the switch to lift-off, raising interest rates for the first time since 2006.
Just like a year ago, the Federal Reserve's December meeting forecast things were looking better and it was time to gradually keep pushing interest rates back to more normal levels.
The market had priced in a further four hikes through 2016 as inflation, employment and growth were expected to climb off the mat.
However, lift-off pretty well stalled on the launch pad, as a China-inspired anxiety attack showed that the world was still a dangerous place.
January and February were hit by a "here-we-go-again" panic on the markets, as speculation about a hard landing in China became an article of faith.
The Fed's December 2016 re-ignition bares some similarities to last year's version but at a slightly lower trajectory, with three increases priced in.
There are the obvious political risks created by not only the incoming Trump administration's big change in policy direction but also a growing unease that the European Union is fraying at the seams.
Then there is China's opaque economy; no-one is sure whether the improving sentiment is solid or illusory.
China pulls back from 'hard-landing' fears
The Chinese equity markets' capitulation early in the year - in the face of rules designed to stop such things - saw the Shanghai exchange tumble around 20 per cent in less than two weeks.
The contagion spread quickly, hammering markets across Asia, Europe and the US. It sent the prices of commodities such as oil, iron ore and coal tumbling as well.
The response in China was another massive wave of government stimulus.
Around 14 trillion yuan ($2.7 trillion) - the equivalent of 35 per cent of GDP - was shoved into the economy in the first six months alone.
It steadied the listing ship, but the ballast was an even bigger load of debt - now sitting around 250 per cent of GDP - and another unhealthy surge in asset prices and speculation.
The National Peoples' Congress also signed off on a new, more flexible GDP growth target for the year, of between 6.5 and 7 per cent.
Not surprisingly the economy (and/or the official statisticians) obeyed China's political masters, staying within the band despite key indicators such as trade, industrial production, fixed asset investment - a proxy for construction and infrastructure investment - and inflation all continuing to undershoot hopes and expectations.
By the end of the year, even property was softening as mortgage restrictions and a crackdown on illegal financing saw housing inflation start to cool and sales volumes decline.
All along, Chinese authorities battled to keep the currency from depreciating too much, having lobbied hard to get it included in the IMF's exclusive and largely symbolic reserve currencies club.
That defence - and a flight of spooked capital out of country - has seen China's foreign exchange reserves fall almost 25 per cent from the 2014 peak of $US4 trillion to the lowest level since early 2011.
That may have slowed the rate of the yuan's decline but it has still fallen 8 per cent against the US dollar this year.
Through all that, China appears to have ended 2016 in better shape than it started.
The economy was strong-armed back into some semblance of stability, production restrictions in inefficient industries and mines were imposed, manufacturing activity grew - as did factory gate prices - and profitability picked up.
Even November's trade data turned around, with a pick-up in both imports and exports indicating growing strength at home and abroad.
All this buoyed investor spirits and led to a dramatic turnaround in commodity prices by the end of the year.
US and Europe grind upwards
The US spent most of the year kicking the interest rate can further down the road.
Despite jobs growing at a steady clip of 180,000 a month, unemployment falling to 4.6 per cent - its lowest level since 2007 - and GDP growth edging above 3 per cent, the Fed held fire on raising rates for the best part of the year.
Stubbornly low inflation continued to worry the Fed and, while it appears to be ticking up, it is still below the 2 per cent target.
Europe also made some progress under the European Central Bank's extraordinarily loose monetary policy of negative interest rates and a massive asset-buying (QE) program.
The UK's vote to leave the EU in June meant that the only certainty had become uncertainty.
The US election - and Donald Trump's victory - added weight to the argument that the new risk was political and an anti-establishment, anti-globalisation fervour was sweeping developed economies.
European inflation is expected to remain low and its QE program looks like rolling on for some time yet.
The final ECB meeting for the year was an interesting mix of hawkish and dovish messages.
The bond buying program was unexpectedly extended until the end of 2017 and the ECB said it could now buy bonds below its -0.4 per cent deposit rate.
However, the pace of purchases will slow from the current rate of 80 billion euros per month to 60 billion from March - just don't call it "tapering" ECB president Mario Draghi counselled.
The ECB also issued a new batch of rather gloomy long-range forecasts, leaving its settings through to the end of 2018 unchanged, but predicting GDP growth will still be just 1.6 per cent and inflation just 1.7 per cent in 2019.
Broadly speaking, the ECB has given itself the flexibility to start running down its QE program if things improve, or dial it up they don't.
There was a notable milestone on the jobs front as EU unemployment finally ducked under 10 per cent.
However, that headline figure masked an ongoing disparity. Germany's jobless rate fell to 4 per cent, while the likes of Spain and Greece recorded unemployment of 19 and 23 per cent respectively.
Youth unemployment across Europe remains at a soul destroying level above 20 per cent.
Is the world still caught in a 'low-growth trap'?
The developed world's economic think-tank, the OECD, in its last outlook paper for the year made some pretty bleak observations.
"Private investment has been weak, public investment has slowed and global trade has collapsed, which have limited the improvements in employment, labour productivity and wages needed to support sustainable gains in living standards," the OECD wrote.
The OECD noted "a durable exit from the low-growth trap" was dependent on better fiscal and monetary policy settings that were described as currently "lacking ambition" and being "incoherent".
For the record, the OECD forecast developed nations' GDP growth would edge up from 1.7 per cent to a still moribund 2 per cent in 2017. Non-OECD nations were tipped to grow at a more robust 4.5 per cent.
Central bankers have been under increasing fire for delivering little else than mountains of manufactured debt in their experiments with unconventional monetary policy.
Since the GFC, domestic economies have seen their interest rates fall on average by 400 basis points while central bank balance sheets have roughly tripled relative to GDP, with growth pretty much in a holding pattern - or "trap" as the OECD would say.
Will 2017 be a year of transition?
The big theme of 2017 may well be the shift from monetary easing - there is only so far interest rates can go below zero and only so much money that can be printed - to a greater emphasis on fiscal tools such as government spending and tax.
Certainly that is the plan of President-elect Trump.
The policies are still sketchy, but hundreds of billions are likely to be spent on infrastructure, while taxes will be slashed for business and the wealthy.
The evidence inflation is starting to edge up will help slow the money printing, although central bankers are only too aware of the perils of another "taper tantrum" associated with tightening things up.
Any switch in stance is likely to be cautious, somewhere between slow and glacial.
Nonetheless, mounting inflation, higher interest rates and a stronger US dollar are likely to dominate economic thinking and the markets.
Then there is political risk and the rebirth of protectionism.
Most political risk is centred on Europe. Germany has a presidential vote in February, the Dutch go to polls in March and the first round of the French presidential election starts a month later.
All the votes are likely to be seen as proxy-referenda on the future of the EU. Defenestrating establishment leaders could cause mayhem, although the Trump vote suggests maybe not.
The root causes behind the rise in protectionism are not about to disappear quickly.
Rising inequality, uncertainty about jobs, racial tension and immigration are all central to the political unrest.
Mr Trump is in the vanguard of the protectionist movement, preaching economic self-sufficiency and promising to rip up the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on the first day of his administration.
Whatever the outcome, 2017 has the feeling of being transitional after years caught in the economic doldrums, or a "growth trap" as the OECD would call it.
It is a delicate balance, but slow growth, slowly rising inflation and a slow return to more normalised policy setting maybe as good as 2017 will get.
History suggests a smooth transition is unlikely, though, and there are plenty of risks primed, ready to spook skittish - and expensive - markets.
Global markets seem to have priced-in the US pursuing "good policies" such as infrastructure spending and tax cuts and avoiding "bad" ones such as protectionism and blowing out the budget deficit.
The resumption of rising rates and tightening financial conditions in the US may coincide with China winding back its credit-fuelled stimulus.
It would not be great __news for Australia if China once again suddenly realised it had overestimated its appetite for hard commodities.
Higher interest rates in the US means a stronger dollar. That in turn translates into a tougher environment for US exporters and cheaper imports, something Mr Trump's supporters did not necessarily sign up for.
If business in the world's biggest economy starts hurting and trade in the second biggest starts slowing again, watch out.
It is around this stage things could get nasty and once again investors bolt for the exits.
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