It is often very difficult not to smile even though there is little lately to smile about. Every so often the world produces an absurdity that proves yet again God has a sense of humor, or that cosmic irony is a real thing. In economics and finance, all of the past few decades have revolved around actual money, which has been nothing like what the textbooks say. Though there was some great debate about 2008, in reality, most people were just too stunned to see through the wreckage for what it was, more concerned with just surviving it than the full truth of it.

That left the events of last year as the great pivot. On the one hand, there were the economists who made much out of very little in 2014 in order to claim as often as they could that QE had worked and the global economy was finally moving in the right direction and at the right pace. On the other side was the bond market, predicting worse than the malaise that had been obvious up to that point, suggesting that the insufficient economy was about to instead become the deficient economy.

In early 2015, it all came to a head with mostly oil. To economists, it was a temporary problem of too much economic success in finding and producing the black stuff; to the bond market, it was an “I told you so” moment. For several months it looked like the economists might have been partially right, that lower crude prices and whatever weakness would accompany them were actually “transitory.” Then August happened, first with China shocking economists not just because of the “devaluation” or the intensity of it, but more so because they had no idea the monetary significance of it. It was revealed to them a few weeks later.

Just as all that was taking place, for all intents and purposes ending the dreams of “transitory”, the ECB decided it would install a sculpture by Giuseppe Penone outside the primary entrance of its headquarters in Frankfurt. Standing an impressive 17.5 meters, the piece depicts a tree made of bronze and granite clustered with gilded leaves. Benoît Cœuré, chair of the art jury and Member of the ECB’s Executive Board, said, “Giuseppe Penone’s tree conveys a sense of stability and growth and is rooted in the humanist values of Europe in the most beautiful way.”