The world has glimpsed financial crisis. But is the worst to come?

Plummeting oil prices and fears about China turned screens red in trading rooms around the world. Although things may have stabilised, some fear we are on the verge of another global recession

They were studying the snow forecasts in Davos on Friday. But the 3,000 bankers and CEOs who had flown to the Swiss ski resort for the annual gathering of the global business elite were not interested in what conditions would be like on the slopes this weekend. Rather, they were focused on the monster blizzard stalking the US.

At the end of a week in which the price of oil had fallen to a 12-year low, the price of the black stuff was finally moving north again, breaching the symbolic $30 mark. The reason? Traders were betting that demand for fuel would increase as the big freeze gripped large parts of the US.

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