As finance ministers and central bankers convened in Marrakesh for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in mid October, they faced an extraordinary confluence of economic and geopolitical calamities - wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, a wave of defaults among low- and lower-middle-income economies, a real-estate-driven slump in China, and a surge in long-term global interest rates – all against the backdrop of a slowing and fracturing world economy.

But what surprised veteran analysts the most was the expected calamity that hasn’t happened, at least not...