'I wish there was a magic wand that said abracadabra,' the new head of the World Bank said when talking about the problem of debts facing developing countries.

The comments from Ajay Banga illustrate some of the seemingly intractable issues facing the great and the good of global finance who have been meeting in Marrakech this week.

In the plus thirty degree heat, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank joint meetings are meant to be a place where cool heads with an eye for financial spreadsheets can find common ground.

And until a few days ago the clear blue skies above the Moroccan city seemed to herald a sunnier outlook for the global economy.

Indeed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen jetted in from Washington insisting that the 'pessimism' enveloping the shindig when it was held in the US a year ago had proved to be unwarranted.

Yet Yellen had to acknowledge that events at the other end of the Mediterranean, after Gaza terrorists mounted an horrific attack on Israeli civilians, had cast a shadow - and could pose a fresh challenge to the global recovery by pushing up oil prices.

It is not the only cloud on the horizon, with the Ukraine war continuing to take its toll, the battle against inflation still not won, and the prospect of interest rates remaining higher for longer threatening to drag the recovery down.

And while many including Yellen are talking up the prospects of a so-called 'soft landing', the recovery envisaged is hardly triumphant, with the IMF's forecasters seeing the global economy 'limping along not sprinting'.

That is even before mentioning the challenges of trying to wean the world off fossil fuels in a way that is fair to developing countries lacking the resources to make the change - and who in many cases will bear the brunt of climate change.

All this with the world teetering on a $235trillion debt mountain - and relations between the US and China, the world's two biggest economies (and who themselves have the biggest debt), strained at a time when consensus is most needed.