i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. the word economy has its origins in the ancient greek "ekonomos", meaning "one who manages a household" yet modern greece is seen as the complete opposite, a country whose financial house is far from in order, a situation that has far reaching implications. >>reporter: nick demos and mary vassilaki are at home helping their children with homework. both parents have seen their salaries slashed by 30 percent over the past 2 years. it's had a huge impact ontheir standard of living and, they feel, their children's future. >>i am telling them that my salary has been decreased twice this year. i am anxious about their extra classes, their sports activities which they love. but i am not sure that they can go on with those." >>reporter: it's not just this family feeling the pinch - the entire greek economy has been contracting for 2 years, and will fall by a further 3.5 percent this year. overall unemployment is 16 percent - 42 percent for the young. >>reporter: many greeks blame p

i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. at the start of the year egypt surprised the world,by overthrowing the regime of president hosni mubarak. six months on and the country is at a crossroads. the revolution appears to have stalled, parts of the economy have been badly battered and protestors are back in the streets. >>reporter: cairo in july. the arab spring has given way to the arab summer. the city is boiling hotbut despite the heat hundreds of protestors have again taken to the streets and are camping out in tahrir square. they're here, they say, because the revolution is in danger. >>azer: i've had friends of mine that are being tried in a military court, friends of mine being arrested, i was arrested once and i was beaten once by the army and this is all after ousting hosni mubarak. >>reporter: since january at least five thousand people have been put on trial by secretive militarytribunals while only one policeman has been convicted, in absentia, for the killing of the nine hundred people who died durin

i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. for manufacturers in china, 2011 marks another yearof power cuts. one of the factors behind this is a rebound in the production of polluting and high energy industries. new policies to radically clean up will be unveiled in the autumn, which will have far reaching implitions for companies doing business in china. >>reporter: for manufacturers, few things are as frustrating as a lack of power - no matter what thecause. >>here in china, regional droughts have near dried-up river beds - leaving not enough water to drivehydro turbines. >>and fossil fuel power plants are reluctant to take up the slack....because they'd have to buy morecoal at today's higher prices and the government won't allow them to surcharge consumers. >>so when coal prices go up, power companies actually find less coal that's delivered to them at a lower price and they have to go to the market. so they don't have the incentive to buy coal from the market to produce power. >>reporter: but power rationing thi

i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. three decades of urbanization and economic reforms have lifted hundreds of millions of chinese out of poverty. the big concern now is how to keep feeding them. changing diet, increasing demand and tightening supply threaten the country's food security. it's a delicate balancing act and one that has implications for commodity markets worldwide. >>reporter: dragon spring village, in the hills above chongqing - where li xingming's family has worked the fields since the 19th century. >>before, our village never planted vegetables, only rice. now, we grow vegetables and we grow less rice, we just grow what we need. >>reporter: this growing and changing demand is coming from china's ever expanding cities - where some 300 million up-and-coming urbanites - like liu min's family - expect much more than traditional staples like corn and rice. >>my family, like others, has more meat, not too much though - and we buy more dairy products, as well as vegetables, and eggs. >>reporter: but

i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. china's central government is desperate to avoid inflation as it seeks to rein-in growth and rebalance the economy. the trouble is, to succeed; it needs the regions on board. and away from the capital, there's still an obsession with huge projects andboosting gdp. >>reporter: pengshui clearly isn't at the forefront of china's economic boom. but like thousands of other backwaters across the country, it has big plans for the next five years as it seeks to boost incomes by at least 14 percent annually. >>the most meaningful economic decisions are made far away from beijing, in places like here - pengshui - over 1500 km south west of the capital. few if any here are interested in cooling economic growth or slashing investment plans as this is the only model they know that can provide jobs, spread more money around and, it's hoped, keep the people content. >>reporter: and in this belief, the local authority plans to plough some 2 billion us dollars every year into investment in