Well it has been an Arab spring. Let's see what the rest of the year holds in store though for the world economy with Robin Bew.

Robin, after the Strauss-Kahn debacle does it really matter who leads the International Monetary Fund?

Europe, of course, fighting very strongly to retain the role of Head of the IMF because they've always had that since the Bretton Woods agreement. But I think it would be useful to have someone from the emerging markets who obviously playing a much bigger role in the global economy in general.

So I think it doesn't really matter who it is as long as they are a top flight political operator and an economic thinker and I think that's very likely.

At the moment, of course, the most likely candidate is the French one - Christine Lagarde. But if it was someone from Asia or perhaps someone from a country in Eastern Europe or Turkey, I think that would be perfectly acceptable.

Europe's problems are pretty clear and I think whoever runs the IMF will be responsible for fixing them and I don't see they'll get treated particularly differently if someone from the emerging markets was running it.

Clearly, when you talk to politicians in Europe and indeed when you talk to the European Central Bank there is a real view that that should not be allowed to happen and so they're kind of kicking the can down the road talking about more bailouts.

Perhaps some governments are now starting to talk about soft restructuring, extending maturities. The European Central Bank absolutely against that, but ultimately, certainly for Greece and Ireland, there is no way they're going to be able to repay their debts without some kind of restructuring.

So that will happen and the only question is when and how do you manage the market fallout. And of course it's very important that it's seen to be done in an orderly and controlled way, but that would require politicians and the European Central Bank to speak with a single voice and at the moment we clearly do not have that, so you really do need to see coalescing behind a strategy that is not only something everyone agrees with, but can actually fix the problem. At the moment we're not seeing that happening - no coalescing behind any kind of strategy, no sense of what's been proposed could fix the problem.

And I think it's that hardship which goes to threaten the existence of the eurozone. If thinks are really dreadful in a market like Greece, at some point they may decide they want to leave. If you restructure, then perhaps things will not be quite so dreadful and they would be happier to stay within.

Of course, the next round of countries everyone is looking at includes Spain and you mentioned the protests we're seeing there.

Spain, it's actually quite difficult to call, but you can imagine they might need a bailout. That would really stretch the financial depth of the pockets for the rest of the eurozone. Obviously, the IMF would need to be involved. Even if they received a bailout we don't believe that that would actually threaten the existence of the eurozone.

But if they received a bailout, attention would switch to some bigger countries - Italy or maybe Belgium, is small but with a very high debt stock. At that point, if we starting seeing problems, it goes beyond the affordability, the ability of European countries to keep this under control through fiscal transfers and at that point I think the euro really does collapse.

So Spain is important because Spain is their last chance to put some kind of firebreak between these countries in the periphery and countries in the core having serious problems. They could handle Spain just about. If it goes beyond Spain, I think it's all over.

I think it does look as if growth is probably going to be a bit softer going forward than it was during much of last year. They had a lot of fiscal stimulus last year, of course. Now the conversation has changed completely. We're up against a debt limit. Most people in Congress arguing for cuts, probably pretty indiscriminate cuts. A real sense that fiscally policy is pretty directionalist and I suspect given the electoral cycle, it's going to remain pretty directionalist for quite a long time, but certainly no more stimulus and obviously QEII coming to an end as well as the Fed pulls away. It will be interesting to see whether they can sustain that stance, but certainly it looks as if, at least in the short-term, there will be less monetary stimulus too.

Those things are going to slow growth and Obama is going to find that that takes some of the shine off the recent bounce that he had.

But actually, for America, like a lot of countries around the world, the recovery is going to be a pretty long haul. They're carrying a lot of debts. Not just the government, but also the private sector. Those debts weigh on the willingness of governments and individuals to spend. That crimps growth. That's what we're seeing in America and it's what we're seeing in markets like the UK as well and that's a difficult political story. But unfortunately it's not amenable to a short-term fix, so I think more problematic economic times ahead, so Obama gets this bounce of course because of Bin Laden. But when you get out another six months the economy will probably be a little lacklustre and that's going to take some of the shine off.

But I think food price is very important. We see there has been some harvest issues back last year. Maybe this year that will be a little bit better. But I think the big story with food is just this incredible rise in demand that we see as countries become wealthier and people start to have better diets.

Those things are knocking through into price inflation, governments needing to respond. I think generally, emerging markets have been a bit slow to respond to this, so the inflation genie has been let out of the bottle and we're seeing governments now struggling to catch up. So China is doing lots of things. Interest rates rising of course, but not only that, bank reserve requirements. Clearly, they intervene on the exchange rate very heavily as well. They have capital controls in place, they have done for a long time. Those things are going to slow the economy.

I mean there is no question that the Chinese economy is in a decelerating mode. It will be softer at the end of this year than it was at the beginning. That's going to be policy-engineered to try and put a lid on inflation and when I look around the rest of Asia, in fact I was talking to my colleagues in Asia only earlier on this morning, there is a very clear sense that as the China locomotive slows the rest of Asia weakens as a result because China is such a massive driver of growth out there.

And so I think in Asia in general the outlook is a little bit softer than perhaps many people were expecting and certainly softer than it was last year. It doesn't mean we think China is going to have a crisis. You could construct all sorts of stories where China might have a crisis, but we think they're pretty unlikely.

But a slowdown driven by policy to try and get inflation under control, that's a racing certainty now and because of that, the rest of Asia will slow as result.

So in the UK I guess that's very interesting. Bank of England, credibility shot to pieces in terms of their ability to control inflation. We expected to see the Bank of England tightening in the first half of this year. That's not happened. Growth looks pretty soft, so I think a lot of concerns about that. We still think they will start to tighten in the second half of the year, but you could imagine if the economy stays really weak, then they won't feel able even to do that. But they're in a very difficult position. I mean they've been saying inflation is going to come down on its own for a long time. It's not happened, so our view is that at some point they are going to have to start to tighten. That will happen this year.

We don't think the Fed will tighten, or raise interest rates until next year, but obviously QEII is ending in the summer so that is a monetary tightening happening now with interest rates higher next year. I do think it's interesting though to see whether just a complete end to QEII is sustainable. Very interesting to see what happens in financial markets. They may need to step back in later on in the year if you start to see treasury bonds moving in an adverse way.

Then for the ECB we've had one rate rise. We had expected another one to happen relatively quickly, but again there the economic environment and all these concerns about the periphery which have increased in tempo I think over the course of the last month or so suggests to us that the ECB is going to stay on the sidelines for a little bit longer. We still do think they will raise before the end of the year, but we had imagined that they would be raising very soon. That now looks less likely.

But I think the direction of travel is clear. For monetary policy authorities we are in a tightening phase. We think it's going to happen rather more slowly than was previously the case. So the Fed next year, Bank of England, the ECB probably pushed out towards the end of this year. But certainly the inflation story is such that Central Banks I think would like to see interest rates higher than they are at the moment and the only question is when are they going to feel bold enough to do that.

You could definitely argue that some commodities were overbought. Last year we had a very difficult harvest story. We think this year it probably looks like it's going to be a bit better, so maybe food supply will be a little bit stronger.

But I think the structural story for commodities is still very bullish in terms of prices. Not very bullish for consumers. The continued strength of the Chinese economy, and while we think China is slowing, we're still looking at growth in China of 7.5%, 8% over the next five or six years or so. Strength of India, strength of the other emerging markets still implies very rapid demand for raw materials, rapid increases in demand for foodstuffs. Those things are going to put pressure on supply and that's going to keep prices pretty elevated.

So while a bit of profit taking, a bit of risk aversion meaning that commodity prices coming off in the short-term, we still think that the fundamentals suggests that demand is going to be pretty robust and as a result, looking ahead a few years we think commodity prices staying high, some commodity price inflation, those things are going to be themes for quite a long time.

Of course, what people are really worried about is if you see signs of unrest breaking out in countries which are much more significant in oil markets and obviously Saudi is the really big one. We're not really seeing that at the moment, but markets are still worried. Of course, we still see problems arising in various countries around the Middle East. People are looking at Bahrain. Libya is still ongoing. Yemen is still an issue and so people are thinking well this is not over yet. Oil prices will remain high as a result.

I think once there is a sense that the Middle East is stabilising, prices will come off a bit and our view is that they will do and if you look at the supply story, actually there is quite a bit of supply coming onto the market over the next few years. I mean most notably in Brazil there is very, very large find which will be coming on stream over the course of the next 24 months or so.

So there is more supply around. So if the Middle East stabilises and you get this extra supply, prices will drop off a bit. But of course, all the time people are worried that Saudi Arabia might get caught up in the problems that we see in the Middle East, prices are going to stay high and that's a good story for the Gulf.