What is our human response to financial crisis and recession? They need moral as well as economic components, as the father of capitalism emphasised.

President Barak Obama referred in his inaugural address to the necessary trust between government and the people. The issue of trust—in human relationships and in the global economy—has become central to the way the world should work. Powerful voices are saying so. But what do we really understand by trust?

The scale of the fraud, amounting to some $50 billion, committed by the former head of the Nasdaq market Bernard Madoff beggars belief. What lessons can be drawn from it about the nature of trust - and gullibility?

Book review: 'The New Pioneers' by Tania Ellis