The Riksbank caught markets by surprise, reducing the benchmark lending rate to minus 0.10 percent and unveiled its first asset purchases, vowing to take further action at any time to stop the country falling into a deflationary trap. The bank presented the move as a precautionary step due to rising risks of a “poorer outcome abroad” and the crisis in Greece.

Janet Henry from HSBC said the measures are clearly a “beggar-thy neighbour” manoeuvre to weaken the krone, the latest such action in a global currency war that does little to tackle the deeper problem of deficient world demand.

The move comes as neighbouring Denmark takes ever more drastic steps to stop a flood of money overwhelming its exchange rate peg to the euro and tightening the deflationary noose. The Danes have cut rates four times to minus 0.75 percent in a month to combat fall-out from the European Central Bank’s forthcoming QE. They have even taken the unprecedented step of halting all issuance of government bonds.

The fall-out from QE in Europe has already smashed Switzerland’s currency defences, triggering a 14 percent surge in the franc against the euro and threatening to erase the last safety buffer for struggling Swiss exporters.

It was the collapse of US house prices back in 2007 that resulted in the seizure of the credit markets and banking crisis of 2008. And it would be easy to lay the blame for the 2008 financial crisis at the doorstep of American home owners, easy but wrong. The collapse of the US housing market was not the cause of the crisis, it was merely a symptom of the more insidious ills of cheap credit, low risk and the promise of another bailout round the corner.

The Keynesian pump priming that has taken place on a colossal scale across the world is failing. The Chinese economy was growing at 12 percent in 2010, but that slowed to 7.7 percent in 2013 and 7.4 percent last year — its weakest in 24 years. Economists expect Chinese growth to slow to 7 percent this year. It is the once booming property sector that has turned into a bust, and is now dragging down the wider economy as the bubble deflates.

It is not only asset classes that are wavering, the key indicators of international economic activity are also flashing red. The Baltic Dry Index which is seen as a leading indicator for world economic growth tumbled to a 29-year low at 559 points last week. The second credit crisis is already unfolding in China and the latest round of European money will struggle to halt the contagion in credit markets.

It's early in the morning, 20 February, 2014. Kiev's Maidan square is divided - on one side the riot police, the protesters on the other. This has been going on for more than two months now. But events are about to come to a head. By the end of the day, more than 50 people will be dead, many of them gunned down in the street by security forces.

The violence will lead to the downfall of Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Moscow will call 20 February an armed coup, and use it to justify the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine. The protest leaders, some of whom now hold positions of power in the new Ukraine, insist full responsibility for the shootings lies with the security forces, acting on behalf of the previous government.

But one year on, some witnesses are beginning to paint a different picture. "I was shooting downwards at their feet," says a man we will call Sergei, who tells me he took up position in the Kiev Conservatory, a music academy on the south-west corner of the square. "Of course, I could have hit them in the arm or anywhere. But I didn't shoot to kill."

Sergei says he had been a regular protester on the Maidan for more than a month, and that his shots at police on the square and on the roof of an underground shopping mall, caused them to retreat. Under attack, the police retreated from their position near the front line in the square, falling back along the street on the north side of Hotel Ukraine. Protesters then advanced towards the police, where they were shot by retreating security forces and snipers from surrounding buildings.

More than 50 people were killed, the heaviest death toll of the clashes between protesters and security forces in the Maidan.

The EU has warned Russia of additional sanctions if the deal is not respected. BBC journalists in Donetsk heard new shelling on Friday morning, though they said it sounded less intense than in recent days. Luhansk also came under bombardment overnight. On Friday morning, a military spokesman in Kiev said eight members of Ukraine's military had been killed in fighting against separatists in the past 24 hours.

The rebels said shelling killed three civilians in Luhansk, reported AFP news agency. Doubts remain about the peace deal, which was agreed following marathon negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

“We will not get a clean close to this crisis today,” Michael O’Sullivan, chief investment officer for the UK and Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Credit Suisse Private Banking in London, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “I think this will drag on. The Greeks have digested a record amount of austerity, so they’ll want some relief from that.” The discord is renewing turmoil in Greek markets after they were buoyed by optimism on Tuesday that there might be room to move toward an agreement.

Greek government bonds fell, after rising yesterday for the first time in five days. Three-year notes yielded 21%, up 150 basis points. The benchmark Athens Stock Exchange Index tumbled as much as 4.2%. Any accord would require an easing of Germany’s stance in the standoff between Greece and its creditors over conditions attached to its 240 billion-euro ($272 billion) lifeline. An impasse risks leaving Greece without funding as of the end of this month, when its current bailout expires, and may put Europe’s most-indebted state’s euro membership in danger.

Maybe Mr Cuomo flunked elementary civics. The opening sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence clearly affirms:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

It may be more convenient to Cuomo’s political philosophy that a select few are empowered to grant rights to the masses, but it certainly is not part of this country’s foundation.

What’s worse is Cuomo is advocating “collective” rights. He speaks as if every American right can simply be overturned at a whim simply because "times change." “Sure, freedom of speech was great in 1789, but we've evolved beyond that as a collective society.” This is a very dangerous slope on which to tread. Maybe CNN will help their anchors learn American history on the network’s new game show. Chris Cuomo desperately needs the tutoring.

But others argued that making our presence known might be dangerous. Researchers at the Seti institute have been listening for signals from outer space for more than 30 years using radio telescope facilities in the US. So far there has been no sign of ET. "A lot of people are against active Seti because it is dangerous. It is like shouting in the jungle. You don't know what is out there; you better not do it. If you incite the aliens to obliterate the planet, you wouldn't want that on your tombstone, right?"

I couldn't argue with that. But initially, I could scarcely believe I was having this conversation at a serious research institute rather than at a science fiction convention. The sci-fi feel of our talk was underlined by the toy figures of bug-eyed aliens that cheerfully decorate the office. But Dr Shostak is a credible and popular figure and has been invited to present his arguments.

Leading astronomers, anthropologists and social scientists will gather at his institute after the AAAS meeting for a symposium to flesh out plans for a proposal for active Seti to put to the public and politicians.

His argument isn't entirely reassuring. But neither is the one made by David Brin, a science fiction writer invited to speak at the AAAS meeting, who opposes the plan. "The arrogance of shouting into the cosmos without any proper risk assessment defies belief. It is a course that would put our grandchildren at risk," he said.

The latest Metroscopia survey gave Podemos 28 percent. The ruling conservatives have dropped to 21 percent. As matters stand, Podemos is on track to win the Spanish elections in November on a platform calling for the cancellation of "unjust debt", a reversal of labour reforms, public control over energy, the banks, and the commanding heights of the economy, and withdrawal from Nato.

Europe's policy elites can rail angrily at the folly of these plans if they wish, but they must answer why ex-Trotskyists threatening to dismantle market capitalism are taking a major EMU state by storm. It is what happens when 5.46 million people lack jobs, when 2 million households still have no earned income, and when youth unemployment is still running at 51.4 percent, and home prices are down 42 percent, six years into a depression. It is pointless protesting that Spain's economy is turning the corner, a contested claim in any case. There comes a point when a society breaks and stops believing anything its leaders say.

The revolt in Italy has different contours but is just as dangerous for Brussels. Italians may not wish to leave the euro but political consent for the project has all but broken down. All three opposition parties are now anti-euro in one way or another. Beppe Grillo's Five Star movement - with 108 seats in parliament - is openly calling for a return to the lira. Mr Grillo proclaims that Syriza is carrying the torch for all the long-suffering peoples of southern Europe, as it is in a sense. "What’s happening to Greece today, will be happening to Italy tomorrow. Sooner or later, default is coming," he said.

Mr Varoufakis [the new Greek finance minister] is trying to limit the damage, praising Mrs Merkel as the "most astute politician" in Europe, and Mr Schauble as the "only European politician with intellectual substance" - a wounding formulation for the others. He has called on Germany to cast off self-doubt and assume its role as Europe's benevolent hegemon, almost as if he were evoking the glory days of the Holy Roman Empire when pious German emperors stood as guarantors for Christendom.

"This is the only pitch that will work."

In a further sign of its fragility, a Ukrainian military spokesman said around 50 tanks, 40 missile systems and 40 armoured vehicles had crossed overnight into eastern Ukraine from Russia. It was not immediately possible to verify the statement. Moscow dismisses such allegations as groundless. The agreement envisages a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists starting on Sunday, followed by the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line and constitutional reform to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.

"The main thing which has been achieved is that from Saturday into Sunday there should be declared without any conditions at all, a general ceasefire," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told journalists. Putin blamed Kiev for the length of the talks, the culmination of a dramatic diplomatic initiative by France and Germany following an upsurge in fighting in which the separatists tore through an earlier ceasefire line.

Merkel on the other hand, said Poroshenko "did everything to achieve the possibility of an end to the bloodshed", while she said Putin put pressure on the separatists to agree to the ceasefire "towards the end" of the talks. Tensions between Putin and the other leaders were evident at the meeting in Minsk, capital of Russian ally Belarus, and they did not appear together to announce the result.

Historically in fact the EU’s origins lie in war preparations. The first step towards supranational economic integration in Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951, was to facilitate German rearmament at the start of the Cold War between the USA and its allies on one side and the USSR and its allies on the other, and to reconcile France to that fact.

The USA wanted a rearmed West Germany inside NATO on its foundation in 1949. This greatly alarmed France, which had been occupied by Germany just five years before. Jean Monnet was America’s man in the affair. To assuage French fears of German rearmament Monnet drafted the Schuman Declaration proposing to put the coal and steel industries of France, Germany and Benelux under a supranational High Authority as “the first step in the federation of Europe”. The EU celebrates the anniversary of this Declaration each year as “Europe Day”.

In his memoirs French President Charles de Gaulle characterised the ambitions of the first President of the European Commission, Walter Hallstein, for Germany and the then European Community as follows: “I think that if in his own way Hallstein is a sincere ‘European’, this is only because he is first of all an ambitious German. For the Europe that he would like to see would contain a framework within which his country could find once again and without cost the respectability and equality of rights that Hitler’s frenzy and defeat caused it to lose; then acquire the overwhelming weight that will follow from its economic capacity; and, finally, achieve a situation in which its quarrels concerning its boundaries and its unification will be assumed by a powerful coalition”.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who pushed through the euro in face of a reluctant German public opinion, was less bifocal: “The future will belong to the Germans when we have built the House of Europe. In the next two years we will make the process of European integration irreversible. This is a really big battle, but it is worth the fight”.

Other cities in Brazil's heavily populated southeast such as Rio de Janeiro face less dire shortages but could also see rationing. Uncertainty over the drought and its consequences on jobs, public health and overall quality of life have further darkened Brazilians' mood at a time when the economy is struggling and President Dilma Rousseff's popularity is at an all-time low.

After January rains disappointed, and incentives to cut consumption fell short, São Paulo officials warned their next step could be to shut off customers' water supply for as many as five days a week - a measure that would likely last until the next rainy season starts in October, if not longer.

Ronaldo Guellen, who runs a small construction store, recently ordered 70 200-liter tanks that can be used to store water. They sold out in three days, he said, and he hasn't been able to order any more because supplies are running short. "People are really getting scared," Guellen said.

The EU’s evident inability to contain the geo-political ambitions of Vladimir Putin may be the most visible of America’s latest concerns, but the more immediate danger centres on the stand-off with Greece, which grows uglier by the day. Greece’s latest overtures to the Russians make the situation seem more alarming still.

Tuesday's apparent olive branch from Greece’s celebrity finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is in truth no compromise at all, despite the evident relief it brought to financial markets; it was merely the same demands dressed up in more acceptable language. Speculation of a six month programme extension was also fast slapped down by the German finance ministry.

To my mind, this is not a game Greece can win, if only because it is also not a confrontation which politically Berlin can afford to lose.

“We have other ways of finding money. It could be the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could be China or other countries,” he told Greek television. Mr Kammenos said Greece would prefer to leave the euro if membership means submitting to what he calls a “Europe under German domination.” The implicit threat to team up with Russia comes up at an extremely delicate moment as French and German leaders attempt to negotiate a peace deal with President Vladimir Putin, and Washington mulls military aid for Ukraine.

Nikos Chountis, Greece's deputy foreign minister, said on Tuesday that Russia and China had already offered financial support to the country. "There have been proposals, offers I would say, from Russia, recently after the election, for economic support as well as from China, regarding help, investment possibilities," he said. "We have not asked for it. It's on the table. We're discussing it," he added, stressing that the first priority was to "exhaust all options" in reaching a deal with the eurozone.

Cyprus has already caused a political storm by offering to expand Russian access to its ports and airfields – including “military facilities” - though it has stopped short of offering full military bases.

A proposal sent by the White House to Capitol Hill on Wednesday would formally give the president the power to continue the airstrikes he has been conducting since last fall against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as well as “associated persons or forces.” The measure would set limits that were never imposed during the wars of the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq by expiring in three years and withholding permission for “enduring offensive ground combat operations.”

But in a letter to Congress accompanying the proposal, Mr Obama, who has said there would be no boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, envisioned limited ground combat operations “such as rescue operations” or the use of “Special Operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.” He also said the legislation would allow the use of ground forces for intelligence gathering, target spotting and planning assistance to ground troops of allies like Iraq’s military.

“If left unchecked, ISIL will pose a threat beyond the Middle East, including to the United States homeland,” Mr Obama wrote. While he repeated his contention that “existing statutes provide me with the authority I need,” he said he wanted to work with Congress to obtain bipartisan support. “I can think of no better way for the Congress to join me in supporting our nation’s security than by enacting this legislation, which would show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat posed by ISIL.”