Ashley Seager

The supply and demand gap is growing far faster than originally predicted, which begs the question: where to from here? Ashley Seager reports.

The United States Federal Reserve chairperson, Ben Bernanke, last week called for further action to prevent the US housing slump forcing more people out of their homes. "This situation calls for a vigorous response," Bernanke said, adding that repossessions and late payments on home loans were likely to rise "for a while longer".

The human rights of the world’s poorest people will be violated unless developed countries accept the need for drastic and immediate steps to prevent global warming from triggering dangerous climate change, the United Nations warned recently. Calling for urgent action on a post-Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, the UN said the risks of "ecological catastrophe" were increasing.

These look like dark days indeed. People in and around the financial markets are muttering about credit crunches, hidden losses and sub-prime meltdown. Wackier Wall Street commentators are calling it "Armageddon". Of course, anyone close to the markets is likely to be working for a hedge fund, investment bank or private-equity firm.

The Federal Reserve, the United States central bank, resisted pressure this week to cut interest rates to ease the turmoil sweeping the world’s credit markets. After its latest meeting, the Fed’s open market committee, headed by Ben Bernanke, left its key interest rate steady at 5,25%, the level that has prevailed since June last year.

Hanno Renn, a Freiburg taxi driver, invested in a communal solar electricity system on a building in the German town in 1993. "Everyone laughed and said I was wasting my money," he says. But now he has paid off his investment and earns a regular income from the electrical company for the power he generates. "I have had the last laugh," he grins.

Globalisation has reduced the bargaining power of unskilled workers and pushed up inequality in many Western countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said this week, urging governments to improve their social safety nets. The Paris-based rich nations club said in its annual Employment Outlook that the prospect of offshoring was likely to have increased the vulnerability of jobs.

A so-called "vulture" fund has been given permission by a British court to enforce a claim for tens of millions of dollars theoretically owed by Zambia. The decision was immediately slammed by campaign groups who demanded that governments of rich countries moved to stop such funds reclaiming debt from poor countries that had supposedly already had their debts written off.

The British and Kenyan governments weighed into the growing debate over "food miles" this week, insisting it was ethically and environmentally sound to buy flowers from Kenya on Valentine’s Day. There is increasing concern at the amount of carbon emitted by the fleets of aircraft that carry millions of flowers to Europe every day from the East African nation.

Until recently, few people outside his native country had ever heard of the Indonesian Energy Minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro. But now, as the world oil price sets records on an almost daily basis, the man who took over as president of the oil producers’ cartel, Opec, on January 1 this year is rapidly becoming a household name.