Driven to despair

A HOUSING slump across America; a global credit crisis; crashing banks and tumbling house prices; a food price spike, growing fears of recession, and now, just when you thought the news could not get worse, a new oil price super spike to more than $130 a barrel.

Any one of these developments would threaten a recession. Indeed, America’s central bank is already struggling to stave off the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But together they put beyond doubt the fact that the world has moved from one era to another, and one altogether less stable and reassuring.


Deepening gloom in housing markets in America and Britain has hit directly at household wealth and the basis of the consumer borrowing and spending surge that has fuelled growth for the past five years. Soaring prices of raw materials and foodstuffs have sparked riots across the world and hit world’s poor.

But the skyrocketing price of oil