All this comes as subprime auto loans for financially stretched buyers are surging. And the so-called too-big-to-fail banks that needed a taxpayer bailout in 2008 now loom even larger than before the crisis: America's five biggest banks account for 44 percent of bank assets, up from 38 percent in 2007, according to SNL Financial.

The trend toward pre-crisis lending practices worries analysts who favored far-reaching reforms to safeguard the system. "We're on a very dangerous trajectory," said Simon Johnson, professor of global economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Johnson said he fears that last week's congressional vote shows that bank lobbyists still carry the political clout to dilute financial regulations.

The kingdom has two targets in its latest oil war: it is trying to squeeze US shale oil — which requires higher prices to remain competitive with conventional production — out of the market. More broadly, the Saudis are also punishing two rivals, Russia and Iran, for their support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the Syrian civil war. Since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, regional and world powers have played out a series of proxy battles there.

While Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been arming many of the Syrian rebels, the Iranian regime —and to a lesser extent, Russia — have provided the weapons and funding to keep Assad in power. Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the traditional centers of power in the Arab world — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states — have been nervous about the growing influence of Iran: its nuclear ambitions, its sway over the Iraqi government, its support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and its alliance with Syria.

The conflict is now a full-blown proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is playing out across the region. Both sides increasingly see their rivalry as a winner-take-all conflict: if the Shi’ite Hezbollah gains an upper hand in Lebanon, then the Sunnis of Lebanon — and by extension, their Saudi patrons — lose a round to Iran. If a Shi’ite-led government solidifies its control of Iraq, then Iran will have won another round.

Today, the House of Saud rushes to shore up its allies in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and wherever else it fears Iran’s nefarious influence. And the kingdom is striking back at Iran, and Russia, with its most effective weapon.

In Venezuela, plunging crude oil prices have already sparked social unrest and political uncertainty. Following the OPEC meeting, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered his government to slash the budget of his oil-dependent and economically weak nation. In Russia, the tumbling oil market - combined with Western sanctions linked to the Ukraine crisis - has sparked a collapse in the ruble.

The plunge in crude prices since June has hit Russia particularly hard, as half of the country's revenues stem from energy exports. Russia's central bank hiked its interest rate for the second time in a week on Monday in an attempt to halt the ruble's plunge, which has sparked huge rises for consumer goods. Norway, on the other hand, unexpectedly cut interest rates on Thursday in an effort to counteract the impact of plunging oil prices and stimulate the Nordic nation's oil-dependent economy.

In the Middle East, Iraq - which is battling Islamic State (IS) militants - will take a major hit from the plunging cost of crude, according to expert Richard Mallinson at consultancy Energy Aspects. "For now the Iraqi prime minister (Haider al-Abadi) is managing to hold together his political coalition and has halted IS advances with various international support," Mallinson said. "Iraqi politicians will find it difficult to cut spending in the current context and so the country is potentially facing a serious economic crisis in the next year or two."

Added to the picture, Iran - the second biggest oil producer in the 12-nation OPEC cartel after kingpin Saudi Arabia - is gaining increasing power within Iraq. "Iran is getting even more influential in Iraq, and those two countries together could start to challenge the level of Saudi crude oil exports in coming years," said Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob.

Pegida’s growing presence has presented politicians with a dilemma over how to uncouple the strong neo-Nazi element believed to form the core of the protests from ordinary Germans with grievances against the government, who make up the bulk of the protesters. Almost two-thirds of Germans, according to a poll for news magazine Spiegel by the TNS institute, believe that Angela Merkel’s government is not doing enough to address concerns about immigration and asylum seekers, and 34% think Germany is enduring a process of “Islamisation”.

Political scientists have said the group’s presentation of itself as a harmless protest movement is what makes it so insidious. “Something quite new is brewing here,” said Hajo Funke, a researcher into rightwing extremism at the Free University in Berlin. “We haven’t seen rudiments like these of an extreme rightwing inspired mass movement for years”. Funke said that even the group’s name was incendiary. “It’s nothing short of a veritable call to arms by far-right populists,” he said, suggesting that the message triggered comparisons to Third Reich propaganda.

While the meeting covered various issues – including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the turmoil in the Middle East – Kerry noted that the US is still committed to closing Guantanamo. “The US commitment to the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison was also illustrated and the desire expressed for the Holy See’s assistance in seeking adequate humanitarian solutions for current inmates,” Vatican spokesperson Father Federico Lombardi told the Vatican Insider.

With more than 130 detainees still at Guantanamo, the US is perhaps hoping the Vatican’s many international connections could convince countries to change their minds and take detainees into their own facilities, the Vatican Insider reported. There has been no information regarding what the Vatican would do to help.

For example, in the Indian debate, "the argument that Russia had re-drawn internationally recognized borders in Europe," is not taken seriously - after all, the West had done the same in destroying Yugoslavia, according to a report by the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. A Norwegian think tank notes that Brazilian foreign policy makers are no longer inclined to remain silent on western countries' human rights violations, while loudly criticizing those of others. Observers find that the world "order" under western domination is beginning to crumble.

In May the "Policy Brief" of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center reported that in Brazil, one is reminded of "the West’s highly selective support of demonstrations and coup d’états in other countries." For example, Brazilians recall that "despite its principled rhetoric" the West wasted no time in recognizing illegitimate putsch regimes - in Venezuela (2002), in Honduras (2009), and in Egypt (2013) and "actively support repressive governments when they used force against protest movements, eg in Bahrain."

Brazilian observers ask, why did nobody propose excluding the US from the G-8 in 2003 when it violated international law by invading Iraq? Why is Iran an "international pariah," while Israel’s nuclear weapons are quietly tolerated? Why are systematic human rights abuses and a lack of democratic legitimacy "in countries supportive of the US acceptable, but not in others?"

"Commentators in Brazil have argued that these inconsistencies and double standards are in their totality far more damaging to international order than any Russian policy," according to the Norwegian "Policy Brief." "If asked which country was the greatest threat to international stability, most Brazilian foreign policymakers and observers would not name Russia, Iran and North Korea, but the US."

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere resolved to present to the cabinet in the middle of next week a draft parliamentary mandate that allows for a huge expansion of the Bundeswehr (German army) deployment in Iraq. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the government is to send combat troops into a war zone without a mandate from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or United Nations (UN) mandate.

Almost 70 years after the end of World War II, the German elite wants to free itself from all the restrictions imposed on it following the historical crimes of the Third Reich. The German army is to be able to deploy anywhere in the world and at any time to defend German political and economic interests. This far-reaching initiative is the result of a systematic campaign.

At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Steinmeier, von der Leyen and Federal President Joachim Gauck used virtually the same words to announce the end of military restraints on Germany. Since then, the government has put this programme into action in Ukraine and the Middle East. In doing so, it has been accompanied by a wave of unprecedented war propaganda on the part of the media.

At the end of the year, the German military is now to be exempt from all restrictions. The federal government is supported in this project by the opposition parties.

The enormous bill for the 13-year conflict, which has never been detailed by the government, will add to the pervasive scepticism about the war in the US, where opinion polls show a majority of Americans believe it was a bad idea. With the Iraq war having already cost the US $1.7 trillion, according to one study, the bill from the Afghanistan conflict is an important factor in the broader reluctance among the American public and the Obama administration to intervene militarily in other parts of the world — including sending troops back to Iraq.

John Sopko, the government’s special inspector-general for Afghanistan, whose organisation monitors the more than $100 billion that has been spent on reconstruction projects in the country, said that “billions of dollars” of those funds had been wasted or stolen on projects that often made little sense for the conditions in Afghanistan. “We simply cannot lose this amount of money again,” he said. “The American people will not put up with it.”

Adjusted for inflation, Mr Sopko said the amount the US had spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan was more than the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe.

As well as further interest payments, the health bills will start to rise dramatically, especially once veterans from the war reach their 60s and begin to use more medical services. Professor Bilmes forecasts future medical and disability costs for veterans from both Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $836 billion over the coming decades. The two wars have also added to the Pentagon’s fast-growing pension bill: the military pension system has an unfunded liability of $1.27 trillion, which is expected to rise to $2.72 trillion by 2034. “The dirty secret about this war is that the Pentagon or anyone else in the government cannot tell you how much it has actually cost us,” says an administration official.

The official's comments made to Bloomberg News at a conference in Dubai could add to further downward pressure on prices, which have already fallen more than 45 percent since June. Brent crude - a global benchmark comprised of high-quality oil from 15 North Sea fields - closed last week at a new five-and-a-half-year low under $62 per barrel.

A slump in prices to levels around $40 per barrel would be a boost for parts of the UK economy and could see petrol prices drop close to £1 per litre providing relief to motorists. However, the slump will also threaten thousands of jobs in Britain's petroleum industry and according to Wood Mackenzie place around £55 billion worth of oil projects in the North Sea and Europe at risk of cancellation.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) - which is comprised of 12 members mainly drawn from the Middle East - agreed at its last meeting in late November to keep its production quota unchanged at 30 million barrels per day (bpd), a move that has led to a rout on global oil markets. Many analysts believe that Opec has effectively launched a price war aimed at producers outside the cartel such as the US and Russia.

“It is entirely possible that the Yen decline becomes disorderly and swift,” said the bank, in one of the starkest criticisms so far of Japan’s radical stimulus policies. The warning came as Mr Abe won a sweeping victory in Japan’s snap elections over the weekend, consolidating his power in the Diet and giving him a further mandate for deep reforms."I promise to make Japan a country that can shine again at the centre of the world," said Mr Abe.

The Abenomics experiment still depends largely on the BoJ's asset purchases, running at 1.4 percent of GDP each month, the most extreme monetary blitz ever attempted in a modern economy. Economists are deeply divided over whether this alone can overwhelm the fiscal shock, and lift the economy out of a 20-year stagnation trap. The worry is that this could set off a beggar-thy-neighbour devaluation process across Asia, eventually sucking in China. "The tentacle of the currency war would spread," said the report.

"There are grounds to argue that China would join the currency war and devalue the yuan if currency moves elsewhere became disorderly," it said. The warnings have raised eyebrows since HSBC has close policy ties with the Chinese authorities. The report sketched an unsettling scenario in which capital flight from Japan flows to the US, setting off an "explosive" rise in the dollar. This may combine with "reignited European break-up fears" as political risk spreads, most immediately in Greece.

Such a combination would put immense strain on those emerging markets that have borrowed heavily in dollars. The Bank for International Settlements says cross-border loans to developing economies have soared from $3 trillion to $9 trillion in a decade, creating systemic risk. HSBC warns that the potential trifecta of a yen crash, a euro slide, and an emerging market crisis could lead to a dollar spike that the US authorities "would be powerless to prevent". This would "destroy the world" as we know it. The report stressed that this is not a forecast but a tail-risk that cannot be ignored.

Post-crisis, they are conforming to strict standards on capital, lending standards and loss-absorbing debt. But, says the Bank, this is not enough. “Just using the capital ratio and hoping for the best, that’s what we did prior to 2008,” says Paul Sharma, the former deputy head of the Bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority who now works at Alvarez & Marsal, the consultancy. “We want our major banks to be able to withstand a crash.”

The European Banking Authority, the EU’s banking supervisor, conducted its own stress tests in October. The four British banks involved passed, although some narrowly, and the UK test is seen as significantly more difficult. The eight banks will be measured on their response to 10 factors – GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, sterling, house prices, commercial property prices, stock markets, wages and bond yields – all going the wrong way. Of the eight banks under the microscope, most are not seen as being at risk of failing. Most of HSBC and Standard Chartered’s business occurs outside of the UK, Barclays would not be as affected by a housing collapse as its peers, and Nationwide and Santander are believed to be well-capitalised enough.

RBS, out of the four banks to be subject to the EBA’s stress tests in October, came closest to failing: The bank embarrassingly admitted that it overstated its EU stress test results last month, meaning it scraped through by just 0.2 percentage points. It is expected to have fared better in the Bank of England tests, which unlike the European ones take into account expected profits and asset sales.

The two banks under most pressure on Tuesday are Lloyds and the Co-op Bank. The former, as the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, is most exposed to the interest rate spike, and subsequent plunge in house prices, envisaged by the stress test.

Lagarde said the IMF is disappointed with the US inaction to ratify the governance and quota reforms and will now move forward without Washington. “I have now been informed by the US Administration that the reforms are not included in the budget legislation currently before the US Congress. I have expressed my disappointment to the US authorities and hope that they continue to work toward speedy ratification,” she said.

“As requested by our membership, we will now proceed to discuss alternative options for advancing quota and governance reforms and ensuring that the Fund has adequate resources, starting with an Executive Board meeting in January 2015,” she added. Earlier in September this year, in her opening address at the United Nations General Assembly, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff warned that international financial institutions are in danger of losing legitimacy if developing countries like BRICS are not given proper representation.The IMF reforms will hand more IMF voting powers to BRICS, a long-standing demand of the group and will also reduce the concentration of representative power of Western Europe at the IMF board.

China and other emerging economies, including BRICS, have long protested against their limited voice at global financial platforms, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank. The IMF quota reform calls for a 6 per cent shift in quota share to emerging economies. It will lift China, which still has less voting power than the Benelux countries ( Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg), to the third largest shareholder. Shares for Russia, India and Brazil will also see hefty rises.

The reforms, however, have been delayed for four years owing to a block by the US Congress as the US retains a veto. IMF chief Lagarde hinted at a “Plan B” in April if the US fails to endorse the reforms by year-end.