The minister said that this was one of the most important issues that the G20 had been dealing with since its first summit. "Decisions have been adopted but only partially fulfilled. Therefore, Russia and its BRICS partners and the G20 co-members, along with other like-minded parties, will seek to implement the decisions on reforming the international monetary and financial system," Lavrov stressed.

He also noted that "the Russian Presidency will pay due attention to the issues of enhancing and broadening investment conditions, introducing measures aimed at new jobs creation and managing sovereign debt without provoking global economic shocks."

Although conflicting voices will attempt to influence the strategy he follows in his first months as Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King’s successor could do worse than listen to the man who infamously almost “broke” the Bank two decades ago.

George Soros – who made £1 billion from betting against sterling in the spring of 1992, pushing the UK out of the European exchange rate mechanism – cautioned that the markets are betting against the pound. Asked at a dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos whether he would once again bet against the pound, he replied: “The markets are.” Mr Soros said the UK was in the perfect position at present as a member of the European Union, but not a member of the eurozone.

He added austerity was the “wrong policy at this time”, but quantitative easing (QE) was the right policy: “You can only grow your way out of excessive debt. You can’t shrink your way out of it.”

The United States can step back from international conflicts, but that won’t make them disappear. Fortunately, there is another power that shares our economic and political values, that possesses sophisticated military technology and is also very interested in stopping the progress of fanatical movements, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. That power is Europe.

If America is to enjoy “peace in our time” — an expression now deployed by both Barack Obama and Neville Chamberlain — while the rest of the world remains at war, then someone else will fill the vacuum. A glance at the other candidates — China, Russia, perhaps Qatar or another Gulf nation — ought to make us all stop giggling about cheese-eating surrender monkeys and start offering logistical and moral support. Europe may not be the best superpower. But it’s the only one we’ve got.

To Syria’s south, Jordan – which has just finished holding elections – faces a near unprecedented influx of Syrian refugees. To the east in Iraq, tens of thousands of Sunni demonstrators – many of whom identify with the largely Sunni uprising next door, and cheered on by an Al Qaida-linked group – blocked a major road in western Iraq in protest against the Shia-dominated government. To the north, today’s bombing at the US embassy in Ankara has been blamed on a banned Left-wing group, the DHKP-C, but most early lists of suspects included Jabhat-al-Nusra, Al Qaida’s Syrian front, while relations between Turkey and Syria are their lowest ebb.

The most volatile of all issues, however, may be Israel’s intervention into the Syrian crisis this week. It appears that Israeli jets bombed not just a convoy of Russian-supplied SA-17 anti-aircraft batteries, located at a military base northwest of Damascus, but other targets also, including a biological weapons research centre. It remains unclear whether the missiles were stationary or were being moved, but in the preceding days the Israeli cabinet had been meeting feverishly and shouting, to anyone who would listen, that chemical weapons were not the only thing that they were worried about. Since the base was less than five miles from Syria’s border with Lebanon, Israel might have been concerned that the missiles would be transferred to Hezbollah, challenging Israel’s hitherto absolute air superiority over the militant group.

There remain a few puzzling aspects to this story. Syria only received these missiles from Russia over the last couple of years (ironically, they were purchased after Israel destroyed a half-built Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007). Why would the regime hand over something so advanced to Hezbollah just when it most needs its air defences to deter a no-fly zone or other foreign intervention? One possible answer is that the missiles were in fact being moved within Syria for safekeeping, and Israel, unable to tell where they were headed, pounced. That is speculation for now. But, if there was such confusion, it highlights how easily one side might misperceive the red lines of another, and how easily a broader war could be sparked...

Ernest Rutherford, the chemist and nuclear physicist, wanted to conduct massive experiments in his laboratories in Britain. He had won the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry and would go on to become one of the legends in his field. But he often simply didn't have the funds. Legend has it that he gathered together his team and said: "Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It's time to start thinking."

These words attributed to Rutherford have become world-famous - also in the realm of politics. And they could hardly be more applicable than to United States Vice President Joe Biden's upcoming trip to Germany. On Friday afternoon, Biden will hold a powwow with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. On Saturday, he is scheduled to deliver a speech at the annual Munich Security Conference.

The reason is clear: Biden might still speak eloquently in public about trans-Atlantic cooperation. But, behind closed doors, his main message will be that America and its allies need to come up with a new way of divvying up responsibilities in this uncertain world.

Leaders of the 27 nations in the EU meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to thrash out a deal on the trillion-euro budget for 2014 to 2020, after talks collapsed in November. Speaking in her weekly podcast, Ms Merkel said she expected the negotiations would be very difficult.

“Germany will try to contribute to a result. We can't say yet whether the talks will succeed. I only know that the negotiations will be very difficult” she said. "But it is worth trying.” She said the budget must be used to make sure the EU increases its competitiveness and that member states' economies become gradually more aligned.

In November, Herman Van Rompuy, EU president proposed a budget of €973 billion (£845 billion), which is just over 1 per cent of EU GDP. However, talks collapsed and David Cameron was accused of “blackmailing” other EU leaders. “Our position is very simple, we cannot increase spending in the EU when we're cutting it at home,” Mr Cameron said after the November talks collapsed. “We argued for a cut, or, at the very least, a freeze in spending.”

Dr Williams offered a counter argument, saying that religion undoubtedly had a place in the 21st century and that the issue was not whether it should exist, but what our attitude towards it should be. He added that modern attitudes towards human rights had their foundations in religious traditions.

The pair were part of a debate on the proposition "religion has no place in the 21st Century" in front of an audience of about 800, who packed the famous 200-year-old university debating club's chambers. In his address, Lord Williams said: "Religion has always been a matter of community building, a matter of building relations of compassion, fellow-feeling and, dare I say it, inclusion."

"The notion that religious commitment can be purely a private matter is one that runs against the grain of religious history." Lord Williams added that respect for human life and equality was inherent in all organised religion. "The very concept of human rights has profound religious roots," he added.

At the end of the debate the house voted to reject the proposition, stating that they do believe religion has a place in the 21st century.