The World This Week...

Barack Obama gave his first state-of-the-union speech to Congress amid growing voter disquiet about his agenda. The president admitted he had not communicated the case for health-care reform very well, but said Democrats must govern and not 'run for the hills' and away from his policies. After the stunning loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts, senior Democratic leaders were reticent about revisiting a health bill any time soon.

Barack Obama presented his administration's latest proposals for bank reform. Advised by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, the president wants to stop banks with insured deposits from trading on their own account and from owning or investing in private equity and hedge funds. To restrict banks that 'are too big to fail', the cap on the size of a bank, limiting it to holding no more than 10% of the share of insured deposits, would be expanded to take in other sources of funding

Britain's economy started growing again in the fourth quarter of 2009. However, the country's GDP was a mere 0.1% bigger than in the previous three months. Britain's mounting debt burden, which is forecast to rise to 78% of GDP by 2014, continued to worry investors. Pimco, one of the world's biggest bond investors, declared that British gilts were 'resting on a bed of nitroglycerine'.