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The debate on "global imbalances" has gone back to the future. The proposal from Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, to target the current account takes us back to the preoccupations of John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944. Keynes, representing Britain, was obsessed with the dangers of asymmetric adjustment between surplus and deficit countries. The US, then the world's dominant surplus country, rebuffed calls for a mechanism that would impose pressure on both sides. Now the US is in the other camp.

Reactions to World Bank president Robert Zoellick's suggestion that gold might be used as part of a package of measures to reconstruct the international system ranged from the lukewarm to the bewildered.

On Wednesday, the government's partial ban on so-called naked short-selling took effect, as part of Berlin's effort to protect its biggest financial institutions and the euro currency from investors who have been betting against them.

In the context of technology the only way out is through. Global society is dependent on artificially inflated energy resources-i.e. oil-that are directly leading us toward total collapse. Technology is being used to most efficiently maximize wealth of the largest corporate conglomerates at the expense of the social fabric and a living environment. The biosphere is in fact collapsing. The technology exists to solve our technical problems but the solutions do not seem like they will be effectively put to use. The power structures concentrating money off the status quo are too entrenched. Each human is called on to become more aware.

The deal, negotiated by Turkey and Brazil, calls for Iran to ship 1,200 kilograms (2,640 pounds) of low enriched uranium to Turkey, where it would be stored. In exchange, after one year, Iran would have the right to receive about 265 pounds of material enriched to 20 percent from Russia and France.

Angela Merkel told a meeting of international financial leaders that the G-20 must work together to reform the finance system. Merkel is pushing for tougher market regulations despite resistance from many countries.