Tales from the Global Economy - Season 1

In the UK, a cup of coffee could cost you £3, yet the farmers who grow the raw green coffee beans might earn less than a penny a cup. The quest for the perfect cappuccino links the poor farmers of Peru and the global weather effect to Wall Street trading pits and fickle consumer tastes.

Alan Greenspan is possibly the most powerful man in the world. He is chairman of the US Federal Reserve and, as such, is responsible for revealing the new US interest rate every eight weeks. Tonight's programme explores Greenspan's mythology and looks at how the world hangs on his every word.

Choreographers Jan and Ken Smith have poured their life savings into a pension fund, but like most of us they have no idea where their money has gone, or what it is doing - good or bad. This programme follows an amazing trail of investment from London to the four corners of the world where their money, unbeknown to them, is being invested in a curious and sometimes contradictory range of enterprises.

How Santa Claus has become the patron saint of supply and demand and the key to a billion dollar worldwide industry.