It's been 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. The downturn started with turmoil in the US subprime mortgage market, and quickly escalated into a global banking crisis. While a decade later, is another global economic meltdown quietly approaching us? 

The 2008 financial crisis was the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression of 1929. And it was almost entirely unanticipated. 10 years later, the world economy is standing at a crossroad that is frighteningly far too familiar: Ballooning budget deficits and soaring public debts. 

Some of the economists and US officials who helped navigate the world economy during the treacherous crisis a decade ago fear that people are forgetting those painful lessons. Ben Bernanke, former Federal Reserve chair, said whether it is a war or a financial crisis, the US is not planning for long-term events. 

"We're on a track where the share of GDP devoted to paying interest is going to be rising and rising, and it's going to swallow up the rest of the fiscal budget, which it's already beginning to do, and reduce our flexibility for whatever emergency we face…we're not planning how to use our national resources for an ageing society, for defense, for all the other things that we need to prepare for," Bernanke added.

Meanwhile, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said, "And so I'm much more concerned with things like the fiscal deficit, dealing with that, because I think that debt bomb is a big concern. And then I come back to some of the things that Ben talked about because I'm looking at some serious structural economic issues that pre-dated the crisis, that contributed to the crisis and that continue unabated: this income disparity issue with wages having been flat for so long."

Jameel Ahmad, global head of currency strategy and market research at FXTM added that volatility still remains in currencies. For example, currency in Indonesia has hit a 20-year low and the Indian rupee reached lowest value on record. this is because we are still seeing after effect of the finance crisis.

"We cannot say we still see recessions of the financial crisis 10 years in the global financial market. In specific, many of our central banks, Bank of England, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, continue to have interest rates near record-lows," said Ahmad signified.

They may differ on how to prevent future crises, and how to overcome them if they happen. But they all agree prevention is far better than a cure. That's because once a downturn gathers momentum, the scale of intervention needed to reverse it will become frighteningly large.