Greeks beware of EU gifts

It is three years since the masters of the universe at Lehman Brothers went supernova.

The financial crisis unleashed then has morphed around the world and shows no sign of abating.

Indeed the normally news-light summer months brought a slew of shocking surveys revealing falling business confidence, plummeting employment and economic activity from the US, through to Europe to Japan.

Of the big zones of the world economy, only China showed a pulse. Now we stand on the brink of further round of chaos and collapse.

Talk of a double-dip or W-shaped recession is misplaced. We have had no recovery to speak of and instead have been locked into an L-shaped limbo for many months, shuffling towards another precipice.

How the world is haunted by the aftermath of 9/11

THE bells which tolled around the world yesterday tolled for all of us.

The 3000 citizens of the world who perished in blazing inferno, plunging aircraft, or diving from high windows to escape the flames first and foremost. But the more than one million whose life's blood was taken in the aftermath too.

There are no memorials to them beyond the expressions of "regret" from just a few of the guilty men. Colin Powell now regards the tower of lies higher than the Tower of Babel he told the United Nations on the eve of the illegal war on Iraq as "a blot" on his record.

And the Labour leader Ed Miliband, whose brother David was one of the foremost propagandists for the slaughter, has described New Labour's role post-9/11 as "a mistake".

From the other war-criminals, Tony Blair, Iain Duncan Smith, George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the Washington gang - regrets, or indictments, there are none.

Cold comfort for the nameless, faceless uncountable victims of the aftermath.