But what are the changes that have been brought on by the crisis - what is different about the new investment landscape?
For a start there's the easy monetary policies that have become the norm everywhere, negative interest rates, increased bank regulation (and bashing), austerity, low productivity, weak and uneven economic growth, falling investment, declining confidence and volatile equity markets (although China's problems since 2011 are as much to blame for that as the crisis).
Before 2008, the global economy was expanding at a healthy 4 per cent a year, while the World Bank now expects global growth of around 2.5 per cent. This week the International Monetary Fund lowered its own forecast (to 3.2 per cent) while declaring the pace of growth "increasingly disappointing" and expressing a worry that the world is slipping into a"new mediocre of low growth that would be hard to reverse". The IMF would like to see a greater reliance on fiscal policies to do some of the heavy lifting, alongside monetary ones.
Pre-2008, dividends pretty much grew on trees and savings earned respectable amounts of interest. Now, there are no such rich pickings. Before, the focus was on taming inflation, now it's about generating it. Back then you could bank on the banks. Now, investors worry about rotten foundations that could bring the banks down all over again despite the billions spent propping them up. Italian banks supplied a timely reminder of that this week.
Chris Dillow thinks companies have become more reluctant to borrow because they fear that credit lines might be withdrawn in future, which has led to lower capex and lower world trade growth, while the crash itself reminded people that macroeconomic risk is greater than they thought during the 'Great Moderation'. And while ultra low rates mean that weak firms have struggled on, as they are just about able to service their debts, this means that, unlike in previous recoveries, low productivity 'zombie firms' are lingering on, which reduces productivity growth.
In fact the zombie risk lies at the heart of investor uneasiness: that while we are trying to engineer a a cure of old problems, we are also dragging them along with us. Hence, the recovery will remain slow and bumpy.
It's no surprise that real total returns as measured by Barclays Gilt Equity Study were negative for UK assets across the board in 2015. They were positive for the 10-year period 2005 to 2015 with returns of 2.3 per cent a year for equities and 3 per cent for gilts. That's lower than returns in the previous decade where they were 5 and 5.6 per cent and in the decade before, 1985 to 1995 9.9 and 6.8 per cent. In fact in the past 50 years only one decade was worse: 1965 to 1975 with real returns of 0.1 for equities and -5.4 per cent for gilts.
The new normal is expected to last for several, if not many, more years. But there's no point looking back to better days. And not all of the changes represent challenges - after all markets have been boosted, as well as been held back, as the chart shows, by post-crisis developments. A grim economic outlook does not mean you let go of the stock market handrail, it means you use the broad brush backdrop to filter investments with those headwinds in mind. And despondency creates opportunity. Our cover feature this week is about opportunities in bonds; our newest columnist John Rosier admits the market is "testing" but that's not stopping him buying and adding to positions (see page 30) while on page 49 fund manager David Smith explains how he manages to generate income of 5 per cent.
