“While the recovery is underway, it is not the recovery we wanted,” Strauss-Kahn said in a speech at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. “It is a recovery beset by tensions and strains – which could even sow the seeds of the next crisis.”

He said two main dangers have emerged out of the recovery: imbalances between countries; and imbalances within countries.

“We see a worrying development: the pre-crisis pattern of global imbalances is re-emerging. Growth in economies with large external deficits, like the U.S., is still being driven by domestic demand. And growth in economies with large external surpluses, like China and Germany, is still being powered by exports. As the IMF warned in the years leading up to the crisisand as the G-20 has emphasizedthese global imbalances put the sustainability of the recovery at risk,” Strauss-Kahn said.

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US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told Davos delegates rapid, drastic spending cuts are “not the responsible way” to cut national budget deficits.

He also said the US was more confident now there was a sustainable expansion, but said it was not a boom.

Mr Geithner said “education, innovation, and investment” were the way forward for the US economy.

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Could the yuan become a rival? China’s economy will probably surpass America’s in outright size within 20 years. It is already a bigger exporter. It is prodding firms to settle trade and even acquire foreign companies in its own currency. That is adding to a pool of “redbacks” outside its borders. These offshore yuan are, in turn, being tapped by borrowers, issuing “dim sum” bonds in Hong Kong.

But as the dollar’s history shows, economic clout is not enough without financial sophistication (see article). If foreigners are to store their wealth in yuan, they will need financial instruments that are safe, stable and easily sold. Dim sum makes for a tasty appetiser. But the main feast of China’s financial assets is onshore and off-limits, thanks to its strict capital controls. The government remains deeply reluctant to let foreigners hold, buy and sell these assets, except under tight limits. Indeed, it is barely ready to give its own people financial freedom: interest on bank deposits is capped; shares are largely owned by state entities; and bonds are chiefly held by the banks””which are, in turn, mostly owned by the state.

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When President Obama welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House on Wednesday, he was joined by a group of students from Washington, D.C.’s Yu Ying Public Charter School. It’s a Chinese-language immersion elementary school ”” the first in the nation’s capital and one of only a handful in the United States.

Interest in learning Chinese has surged in the past decade as American economic ties to China have deepened. A growing number of elementary and high schools are offering Chinese classes ”” though few teach it as intensively as Yu Ying in the northeast D.C. neighborhood of Brookland.

Housed in a former convent, the school’s 240 students alternate school days learning in entirely Chinese and English.

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Alone among the world’s economic powers, the United States is suffering through a deep jobs slump that can’t be explained by the rest of the economy’s performance.

The gross domestic product here ”” the total value of all goods and services ”” has recovered from the recession better than in Britain, Germany, Japan or Russia. Yet a greatly shrunken group of American workers, working harder and more efficiently, is producing these goods and services.

The unemployment rate is higher in this country than in Britain or Russia and much higher than in Germany or Japan, according to a study of worldwide job markets that Gallup will release on Wednesday. The American jobless rate is also higher than China’s, Gallup found. The European countries with worse unemployment than the United States tend to be those still mired in crisis, like Greece, Ireland and Spain.

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Chinese President Hu Jintao, who travels to Washington this week for a state visit after a year marked by disputes and tension with the United States, said the two countries could mutually benefit by finding “common ground” on issues from fighting terrorism and nuclear proliferation to cooperating on clean energy and infrastructure development.

“There is no denying that there are some differences and sensitive issues between us,” Hu said in written answers to questions from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He said “We both stand to gain from a sound China-U.S. relationship, and lose from confrontation.”

To enhance what he called “practical cooperation” on a wide range of issues, Hu urged an increase in dialogues and exchanges and more “mutual trust.” He said, “We should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality” and, in what seemed like an implicit rejection of U.S. criticisms of China’s internal affairs, said the two should “respect each other’s choice of development path.”

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However, this is only one ”“ misleading ”“ side of the story. There are moments ”“ moments of crisis for the hegemonic discourse ”“ when one should take the risk of provoking the disintegration of appearances. Such a moment was described by the young Marx in 1843. In ”˜Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law’, he diagnosed the decay of the German ancien regime in the 1830s and 1840s as a farcical”‹ repetition of the tragic fall of the French ancien regime. The French regime was tragic ”˜as long as it believed and had to believe in its own justification’. The German regime ”˜only imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world imagine the same thing. If it believed in its own essence, would it ”¦ seek refuge in hypocrisy and sophism? The modern ancien regime is rather only the comedian of a world order whose true heroes are dead.’ In such a situation, shame is a weapon: ”˜The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicising it.’

This is precisely our situation today: we face the shameless cynicism of a global order whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights and so on. Through actions like the WikiLeaks disclosures, the shame ”“ our shame for tolerating such power over us ”“ is made more shameful by being publicised. When the US intervenes in Iraq to bring secular democracy, and the result is the strengthening of religious fundamentalism and a much stronger Iran, this is not the tragic mistake of a sincere agent, but the case of a cynical trickster being beaten at his own game.

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Two leading credit rating agencies on Thursday cautioned the U.S. on its credit rating, expressing concern over a deteriorating fiscal situation that they say needs correction.

Moody’s Investors Service said in a report Thursday that the U.S. will need to reverse an upward trajectory in the debt ratios to support its triple-A rating.

“We have become increasingly clear about the fact that if there are not offsetting measures to reverse the deterioration in negative fundamentals in the U.S., the likelihood of a negative outlook over the next two years will increase,” said Sarah Carlson, senior analyst at Moody’s.

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For now, Beijing wields enough power to keep the US in check in the Pacific and to discourage Taiwan from relying too heavily on American support. In the future, the Pentagon believes that the PLA could extend further into the Pacific, using its fleet to control shipping lines and oil concessions. The “pace and scale” of the PLA’s modernisation has been “broad and sweeping”, the Pentagon said. But, for now, China’s modern army “remains untested”.

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Food riots, geopolitical tensions, global inflation and increasing hunger among the planet’s poorest people are the likely effects of a new surge in world food prices, which have hit an all-time high according to the United Nations.

The UN’s index of food prices ”“ an international basket comprising wheat, corn, dairy produce, meat and sugar ”“ stands at its highest since the index started in 1990, surpassing even the peaks seen during the 2008 food crisis, which prompted civil disturbances from Mexico to Indonesia.

“We are entering danger territory,” said the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s chief economist, Abdolreza Abbassian.

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If poverty means more than just the weight of a wallet, the world’s poor may be more numerous than previously believed. World Bank estimates put the population of global poor at 1.44 billion people””but a recent poverty index based on the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Lamont University Professor and professor of economics and philosophy, raises that number to 1.71 billion.

The differences lie in how poverty is measured. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), published in July by researchers from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Oxford University’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative, factors in living standards ranging from sanitation and the composition of household flooring (dirt, sand, or dung) to child mortality and years of schooling. The MPI asks how far a person has to walk for clean drinking water, while the World Bank’s measure is based solely on income, defining anyone who earns less than $1.25 a day as poor. By the World Bank standard, for example, only 39 percent of the population of Ethiopia would be considered poor; by MPI calculations, the figure is 90 percent. Conversely, 46 percent of Uzbekistan’s population would be classified as poor using the $1.25-a-day measure, but only 2 percent meet the criteria under the MPI. A change in how the poor are counted could vastly improve the effectiveness of international aid organizations as they allocate resources among impoverished people globally.

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High oil prices threaten to derail the fragile economic recovery among developed nations this year, the leading energy watchdog has warned, putting pressure on the Opec oil cartel to increase production.

Over the past year the oil import costs for the 34 mostly rich countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have soared by $200bn to $790bn at the end of 2010, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency.

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5. It could be said that among the fundamental rights and freedoms rooted in the dignity of the person, religious freedom enjoys a special status. When religious freedom is acknowledged, the dignity of the human person is respected at its root, and the ethos and institutions of peoples are strengthened. On the other hand, whenever religious freedom is denied, and attempts are made to hinder people from professing their religion or faith and living accordingly, human dignity is offended, with a resulting threat to justice and peace, which are grounded in that right social order established in the light of Supreme Truth and Supreme Goodness.

Religious freedom is, in this sense, also an achievement of a sound political and juridical culture. It is an essential good: each person must be able freely to exercise the right to profess and manifest, individually or in community, his or her own religion or faith, in public and in private, in teaching, in practice, in publications, in worship and in ritual observances. There should be no obstacles should he or she eventually wish to belong to another religion or profess none at all. In this context, international law is a model and an essential point of reference for states, insofar as it allows no derogation from religious freedom, as long as the just requirements of public order are observed. The international order thus recognizes that rights of a religious nature have the same status as the right to life and to personal freedom, as proof of the fact that they belong to the essential core of human rights, to those universal and natural rights which human law can never deny.

Religious freedom is not the exclusive patrimony of believers, but of the whole family of the earth’s peoples….

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When Anglicans worship, we affirm our faith by saying the Creed together. As we come to the point when we say, “we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church,” we remember that we are part of the one Church of Christ since it was started on the day of Pentecost and before all the divisions that have taken place over the centuries. It also reminds us of our responsibilities to strive for unity, in order to fulfill the desire of Jesus’ heart: “that they may be one” (cf. John 17).

This also reminds us of our failure to take seriously our responsibility towards the unity of the Church of Christ. We not only have failed, but many of the reformed and evangelical churches have contributed in widening the gap between them and the traditional churches.

This “widening of the gap” happened as a result of rejecting many ideas and practices, simply because they belonged to the traditional churches. The main focus of our reformed churches was directed towards the study of the Scriptures, mission and evangelism….

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”How do you deal toughly with your banker?” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to China, asked then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd in March 2009, according to US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

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Party leaders were evidently pleased with what they described in their main annual meeting as China’s ”marked rise in international status and influence”. Beyond exploiting the domestic propaganda value, however, they struggled to find ways to put China’s new-found power to good use.

Throughout 2010, the leadership appeared to lurch from underestimating its power to overestimating it. The signs of overreach were most evident in the geopolitical realm. Beijing showed a new willingness to throw its weight around in pursuit of narrowly defined self-interest, which generated an acute sense of unease among many of China’s neighbours. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam have responded by inviting the United States to re-establish its diplomatic and military primacy in the region, despite Chinese protests.

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One of those responsible for leading the younger leaders movement within Lausanne, Michael Oh, wrote this afterward:

During the reception for younger leaders, where we had close to 1,000 in attendance, I mentioned that many had been asking about the future of Lausanne and the future of the global Church. So I asked the young people gathered there to look around the room and into each other’s eyes. And I said to them, “Welcome to the future.”

Jesus showed up with a message. My job at the congress, which nobody envied but everybody was keen to encourage, was to chair the Statement Working Group.

We were tasked to listen for the voice of the Lord coming through the deluge of voices in all the plenaries and groups, and a deluge it was. It was like trying to catch Niagara Falls in a bucket. We hope to release the full Cape Town Commitment, Parts 1 and 2, in January 2011.

But what struck me towards the end was how often we had heard two themes coming through again and again ”” the same voice, saying the same things: “Make disciples” (don’t just count decisions to believe in me) and “Love one another” (and stop chopping up my body among you with your brands and labels, your ignorance and arrogance). And I thought to myself: “Two thousand years ago an Ethiopian met Jesus and brought him to the top end of Africa, through the scroll of Isaiah interpreted by Philip. How wonderful that two thousand years later our Lord is meeting us at the bottom end of Africa and giving us the same fundamental message.”

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What is new are efforts by China’s national and provincial governments to crack down on the illegal mines, to which local authorities have long turned a blind eye. The efforts coincide with a decision by Beijing to reduce legal exports as well, including an announcement by China’s commerce ministry on Tuesday that export quotas for all rare earth metals will be 35 percent lower in the early months of next year than in the first half of this year.

Rogue operations in southern China produce an estimated half of the world’s supply of heavy rare earths, which are the most valuable kinds of rare earth metals. Heavy rare earths are increasingly vital to the global manufacture of a range of high-technology products ”” including iPhones, BlackBerrys, flat-panel televisions, lasers, hybrid cars and wind-power turbines, as well as a lot of military hardware.

China mines 99 percent of the global supply of heavy rare earths, with legal, state-owned mines mainly accounting for the rest of China’s output. That means the Chinese government’s only effective competitors in producing these valuable commodities are the crime rings within the country’s borders.

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A group founded by American actor George Clooney said Tuesday it has teamed up with Google, a U.N. agency and anti-genocide organizations to launch satellite surveillance of the border between north and south Sudan to try to prevent a new civil war after the south votes in a secession referendum next month.

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Popes, like musical composers, tend to weave certain major and minor themes throughout their body of work. If you want to know which compositions they regard as turning points, therefore, look for the ones where they step outside their own skin — breaking with the instincts of a lifetime in order to accomplish something new.

For instance, when Benedict XVI stood next to a Muslim mufti for a moment of silent prayer in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque in 2006 ”“ despite his longstanding theological reservations about interreligious prayer ”“ it offered a clear signal of his commitment to Islamic/Catholic reconciliation, which was especially crucial in the wake of his Regensburg address just two months before.

By the same logic, Benedict XVI’s decision earlier this year to create a “Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization” also would have to rank as a carefully considered roll of the dice, because this is hardly a pope enchanted by bureaucracy.

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Perhaps the biggest collection of words ever assembled has just gone online: 500 billion of them, from 5 million books published over the past four centuries.

The words make up a searchable database that researchers at Harvard say is a new and powerful tool to study cultural change.

The words are a product of Google’s book-scanning project. The company has converted approximately 15 million books so far into electronic documents. That’s about 15 percent of all books ever published. It includes books published in English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew.

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Interreligious dialogue — perhaps especially Catholic-Muslim dialogue — must deal with how world religions confront secular modernity, Canadian theologian Gregory Baum said in a major lecture in Washington Nov. 17.
Catholic dialogue with Jews and Muslims does not contradict the Catholic proclamation of the Gospel, although tensions between dialogue and evangelization are not always easily resolved, he said. “Interreligious dialogue transforms the traditions involved in it: It purifies them and enriches them,” he said.

But if such dialogues are to be authentic, he said, they must also work together to face up to the challenges that classic world religions face in today’s globalized world of technology, finance, trade, and other cultural and secular forces.

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As Anglicans and Episcopalians met last week in the Dominican Republic to share their stories and organize around issues of climate justice, in Panama heavy rains and floods killed at least 10 people, displaced 4,700 more, and forced the first-ever weather-related closure of the Panama Canal.

“While we are here for the conference on climate justice, in Panama people are being evacuated out of areas that are being flooded,” said Bishop Julio Murray of the Episcopal Church of Panama Dec. 9, in an interview with ENS. “The groups that are mostly affected are the indigenous groups that live in the area of Alto Bayano … it is the first time in my lifetime that the Panama Canal has had to suspend traffic ”¦ this is an example of what happens when water levels rise in rapid ways.”

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UN talks in Cancun have reached a deal to curb climate change, including a fund to help developing countries.

Nations endorsed compromise texts drawn up by the Mexican hosts, despite objections from Bolivia.

The draft documents say deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not establish a mechanism for achieving the pledges countries have made.

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This is a dark hour. The Kyoto Protocol will end in 2012. With every failed summit, the likelihood grows that there will be no new treaty to replace it. Kyoto was far from perfect. The nations covered by the protocol’s targets account for less than a quarter of global emissions. And it did not cover shipping or aviation. But Kyoto did represent a global recognition of the need to tackle climate change. And if the treaty lapses without a replacement the small successes it has delivered, such as finance for developing nations that protect their rainforests, could unravel.

Optimists point out that Spain and India have made constructive moves over the past fortnight. But Japan, Canada and Russia have grown more recalcitrant. And the election of a host of new climate sceptic Republican members to Congress in last month’s mid-term US elections has tied President Barack Obama’s hands. China, meanwhile, remains the roadblock that it was in Copenhagen.

It is tempting to argue that the search for a binding global deal should now be abandoned and to recommend that governments focus on national emission reductions, bilateral deals where possible or even adaptation to a hotter planet. Yet if nations go their own way, we will likely descend into a beggar-thy-neighbour world, in which countries with laxer emissions controls poach manufacturing capacity from states that take a lead. It is hard to see even the most modest national emission reduction efforts surviving under such circumstances.

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The world is considered a more corrupt place now than it was three years ago, a poll suggests.

Some 56% of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt.

The organisation put Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India in the most corrupt category, followed by China, Russia and much of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a BBC poll suggests that corruption is the world’s most talked about problem.

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Is WikiLeaks a serious journalistic enterprise or a wrecking party? The organisation had given the impression that it had been trying to be more responsible in the past month, after having been accused of endangering the lives of US troops and their helpers by releasing the Afghanistan war logs. But yesterday’s publication of a list of facilities deemed vital to US national security is a step back in the wrong direction. There is a dangerous nihilism in the refusal to distinguish between information that embarasses the powerful, and information that potentially puts lives at risk.

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