Poverty can be solved, declares Muhammad Yunus. But as long as politicians and starry-eyed idealists are blinded by good intentions, poor people will remain poor. Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, which pioneered the idea of microcredit, knows how poverty can be effectively tackled. Marco Visscher looked him up in Bangladesh and they sat down for a long talk

The Philips factory, which was the pride of the Belgian city of Hasselt, closed its doors in 2002 and the jobs were “outsourced” to Eastern Europe, Taiwan and China. This story is emblematic of what’s happening today as the economic centre of gravity shifts to Asia. Ode traces Philips’ footsteps to offer a firsthand view of the global economy