The Dutch central bank – De Nederlandsche Bank – was one of the latest to make the move. The bank announced last Friday that it moved a fifth of its total 612.5-metric-ton gold reserve from New York to Amsterdam earlier in November. It was done in an effort to redistribute the gold stock in “a more balanced way,” and to boost public confidence, the bank explained. “With this adjustment the Dutch Central Bank joins other banks that are keeping a larger share of their gold supply in their own country,” the bank said in a statement. “In addition to a more balanced division of the gold reserves...this may also contribute to a positive confidence effect with the public.”

Meanwhile, Switzerland has organized the ‘Save Our Swiss Gold’ referendum, which is taking place on November 30. If passed, it would force the Swiss National Bank to convert a fifth of its assets into gold and repatriate all of its reserves from vaults in the UK and Canada. “The Swiss initiative is merely part of an increasing global scramble towards gold and away from the endless printing of money. Huge movements of gold are going on right now,” Koos Jansen, an Amsterdam-based gold analyst for the Singaporean precious metal dealer BullionStar, told the Guardian.

Germany tried and failed to adopt a similar path in early 2013 by announcing a plan to repatriate some of its gold reserves back from the US and France. The efforts fizzled out this summer, when it was announced that Germany decided to leave $635 billion worth of gold in US vaults.

"Naimi spoke about market share rivalry with the United States. And those who wanted a cut understood that there was no option to achieve it because the Saudis want a market share battle," said a source who was briefed by a non-Gulf OPEC minister after Thursday's meeting.

Oil hit a fresh four-year low below $72 per barrel on Friday. A boom in shale oil production and weaker growth in China and Europe have sent prices down by over a third since June. "You think we were convinced? What else could we do?" said an OPEC delegate from a country that had argued for a cut. Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri effectively confirmed OPEC was entering a battle for market share.

"Oil stocks are currently in the final phase of capitulation," said UniCredit strategist Christian Stocker. Oil prices have been sliding for months, but the pain has mostly been felt by oil-services suppliers rather than majors like Royal Dutch Shell or Total. Investors maintained some faith in them based on their record of paying reliable dividends. That faith appeared to erode on Friday, when $33 billion in market capitalisation was wiped off the sector in Europe.

“The behaviour it encourages is hardly appropriate to this or any other time of year. Shoppers have been injured and assaulted. Staff have been cursed at and threatened. Chaos has been visited on stores around the country. In one incident, a mob of 200 refused to leave when managers told them they’d run out of stock. It is almost unbelievable that police had to deal with unruly shoppers. As Sir Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, put it: ‘Our officers have enough to do already.’

Disturbing as such images might be, perhaps the real point to make about Black Friday is its sheer lack of point. Buying gifts for friends and loved-ones, the sense of preparation and imminent celebration – these are important. But there is absence of context, a mindlessness even, to what we are now seeing that makes me concerned. I have even asked myself the question: Is this the Black Day that killed Christmas?

Of course, it is only in recent years that we’ve even heard of Black Friday, and that is because it is an American phenomenon through and through. It has its roots in Thanksgiving, which itself is based on Christian celebrations for the harvest, and is associated closely with the Pilgrim Fathers. In their greed, American retailers are now opening stores on Thanksgiving itself.”

He made his comments as it was disclosed that a black hole in the EU budget could leave British taxpayers paying an extra £34 billion over six years. He said that a British exit would leave Europe “wounded” and that “everything should be done to avoid it”. “Without the United Kingdom, Europe would be wounded, even amputated – therefore everything should be done to avoid it,” he said.

“But it will survive. Without France, Europe — the European idea – would be dead.” Experts have warned that the dire state of the French economy risks creating stagnation in the eurozone that could cause another global financial crisis. Mr Cameron has pledged to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU before holding an in-out referendum in 2017.

His remarks were interpreted by the market as a signal that the cartel would keep its production ceiling at 30 million barrels per day (bpd), which sent the price of crude lower. Brent crude - a global benchmark comprised of a blend of high-quality oil from 15 North Sea fields - fell 1.3 percent to $77.30 per barrel after Mr Naimi's comments, before recovering to trade flat at $78.29 by late afternoon. Brent crude has fallen 30 percent since June.

Crude traded in the US fell to as low as $74 per barrel as traders bet that Opec will allow the price to fall further amid growing signs of a global price war amid producers. "There remains little prospect of any production cut being agreed at [Thursday's] Opec meeting," said brokers at Commerzbank. "Opec will merely agree to comply better with the current production target of 30 million bpd.

American producers risk becoming victims of their own success. At today’s prices of just over $70 a barrel, drilling is close to becoming unprofitable for some explorers, Leonid Fedun, vice president and board member at OAO Lukoil (LKOD), said in an interview in London.

“In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun, who’s made a fortune of more than $4 billion in the oil business, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.”

At the moment, some US producers are surviving because they managed to hedge the prices they get for their oil at about $90 a barrel, Fedun said. When those arrangements expire, life will become much more difficult, he said.

As he had at recent meetings in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Bochum, Schwarz explained that a watershed in the turn towards war came with an October 3, 2013 speech by President Joachim Gauck, in which he demanded that Germany once again play a role "in Europe and the world". Schwarz explained how German militarism was being advanced behind the backs of the people. The government, the media and all political parties — including the Left Party — expressly support the revival of German militarism in spite of popular hostility.

"The country where the new course was put into practice was Ukraine," Schwarz stated. He described how the former German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, together with the US diplomat Victoria Nuland and EU Foreign Policy Representative Baroness Ashton, intervened directly in the activities of the “Euro-Maidan" at the the end of 2013, and then prepared the coup against Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych, which was spearheaded by the fascist Right Sector. Since then the German Government has backed the Poroshenko government and helped coordinate new NATO deployments at the Russian border.

"Why do the German elites once again want war?" Schwarz asked. He then explained that with its intervention in Ukraine, the German bourgeoisie was returning to its historic policy of expansion towards the east. He detailed how the European Union had been plunged into a deep crisis following the outbreak of the financial crash of 2008. Germany's response was the revival of militarism. As was the case in 1914 and 1939, Germany was once again seeking to dominate Europe in order to become a world power. Schwarz illustrated this with reference to a web site run by the Foreign Office, with an article emblazoned with the headline: "Germany's destiny: lead Europe in order to lead the world". "A few years ago such a proclamation would have unleashed a storm of indignation," Schwarz said.

“An economically isolated Russia, one that may face collapse, would not help improve security in Europe or in Ukraine, but would pose a danger to itself and others,” Steinmeier said. “One of the problems is that many people aren’t having a dialogue. That’s not true of the Germans.” Steinmeier echoed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warning that the standoff with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine will be lasting.

Even as fighting flares between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the former Soviet republic’s east, with Europe accusing Russia of stoking the conflict, Steinmeier said the door to talks should remain open. The clash over Ukraine “won’t be over tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Steinmeier said. “I plead as a necessary reaction not to hold senseless talks, but at the same time, not to foreclose simply on all the channels” with Russia.

Yet there is a snag. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the biggest printer of them all in relative terms, far outstripping the Bank of Japan, let alone the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England – mere amateurs at this game.

The SNB has boosted its balance sheet to a colossal 83 percent of GDP in a maniacal – but fully justified – effort to stop the Swiss franc appreciating beyond 1.20 to the euro, and to head off deflation. It vowed to print whatever is necessary to buy foreign bonds and defend the exchange rate. It has been true to its word since 2011.

It said that as the PLA makes its combat exercises more realistic, training technologies and equipment have become increasingly incapable of meeting the military's requirements, so it is necessary to tap into private businesses' expertise. The 108 items being sought include dummies used by medical personnel and simulators for early warning planes and aircraft carrier operators and technologies such as short-distance wireless positioning and cloud computing.

"These public procurements are unprecedented in their openness, transparency and wide coverage. They will help lift the effectiveness of our military spending and optimise resource distribution, thus boosting the PLA's modernisation drive," the newspaper quoted an unidentified officer from the PLA as saying. According to PLA Daily, 117 defence industry companies and private enterprises have submitted proposals covering 106 of the 108 procurements.

But the growing ranks of these cellphone addicts are turning cities like Tokyo, London, New York and Hong Kong into increasingly hazardous hotspots, where zombified shoppers appear to be part of vast games of human pinball. Tokyo Fire Department, which runs the ambulance service in the megalopolis, says that in the four years to 2013, 122 people had to be rushed to hospital after accidents caused by pedestrians using cellphones.

As well as the vaguely comedic incidents of businessmen smacking into lamp-posts or tripping over dogs, this total also included a middle-aged man who died after straying onto a railway crossing while looking at his phone. More than half of Japanese now own a smartphone and the proportion is rising fast, including children who customarily walk to and from school.

Tokyo is just one of the places struggling to cope with this very 21st Century menace. In China, an amusement park in the south-western megacity of Chongqing has divided a pavement within its grounds into two lanes - one sign-posted "No mobile phones" and the other "Mobile phone use permitted but all consequences are your responsibility."

These projects work by, for example, shading the Earth from the Sun or soaking up carbon dioxide. Ideas include aircraft spraying out sulphur particles at high altitude to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or using artificial "trees" to absorb CO2. Now three combined research projects, led by teams from the universities of Leeds, Bristol and Oxford, have explored the implications in more detail.

The central conclusion, according to Dr Matt Watson of Bristol University, is that the issues surrounding geo-engineering - how it might work, the effects it might have and the potential downsides - are "really really complicated". "We don't like the idea but we're more convinced than ever that we have to research it," he said. "Personally I find this stuff terrifying but we have to compare it to doing nothing, to business-as-usual leading us to a world with a 4C rise."