The Japanese finance minister checks his watch and smooths his already immaculate hair. Jun Azumi is a little nervous.

In a cramped Mexico City office, he's waiting for a photo call with Christine Lagarde, the 6ft tall, impeccably elegant managing director of the International Monetary Fund who is as close as it gets to a megastar in the world of finance.

For the past month Ms Lagarde has given the BBC unusual behind-the-scenes access as she steers her 187-member organisation to manage the biggest financial crisis of our lifetimes - the fiscal nightmare that is the eurozone.

I first caught up with her on a cold January morning in Washington DC as she walked to work. Yes, Ms Lagarde has always been a little unconventional, and ditching the world-leader-limo in favour a brisk stroll fits the pattern. Besides, she needs all the physical activity she can get.

"Normally I walk a lot faster," she chides. "I work so hard and so long hours that I don't have time to exercise."

She has a way of getting people to do what she wants. I promise to pick up the pace.

Passing the cap

Christine Lagarde first came to Washington to work as an intern on Capitol Hill during the Watergate scandal. Now she's back in a very different role, with a mission to protect the world from the fallout of the euro crisis.

"All economies of the world are likely to be affected by what is happening in one key region of the world. Much more so than, say, at the time of the Latin American crisis or the Asian crisis," she insists.

Watch more of Katty Kay's profile of Christine Lagarde on the following BBC programmes:

Her conviction that the euro crisis leaves no country immune is what is driving Ms Lagarde to ask the world to help pay for a $500bn (£314bn) global firewall. It is a job that keeps her extremely busy and extremely mobile.

Last Friday, as we walked together through Dulles airport near Washington, I asked her how many flights she has taken this year. Of all our encounters, this was one of the few times she could not think of an answer.

Luckily a couple of French fans call out gaily in greeting and Ms Lagarde is saved from the airplane maths exam.

On that travel occasion she was on her way to Mexico City for a meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and she invited us to join her.

This summit is a chance to pass around the IMF cap for those hundreds of billions of dollars. She uses all her easy charm and lawyer's training to cajole non-eurozone countries to surrender their domestic interests to the greater global good.

The trouble is countries like the US, China and the increasingly confident emerging economies don't see why they should pay more until Europe does more to help itself.

"Until we see the colour of the eurozone money we're not prepared to put our own money in," Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, tells me.

That is an argument you hear, too, from countries that have themselves received IMF bailouts in the past. In 1994 the Mexican peso crisis sent panic through the region and the IMF stepped in with a $17bn (£10.7bn) loan.

But Mexican economists complain that the conditions for their loan were far stricter than Europe's and it leaves them wondering: Is the IMF too soft on the eurozone?

"We should have equal treatment," says economist Luis De La Calle. "There's always the perception that the IMF is a European institution and the fact that Lagarde is a former French foreign minister is all the more reason for her to be tough on Europe."

If Christine Lagarde ever bristles, it is in rejection of just that criticism. She says she would like to meet Mr De La Calle and set him right. "I feel very much managing director of the IMF. I'm no longer French and I'm no longer European."

In some respects her close European ties are an advantage. The euro crisis is about politics as much as it about economics and Ms Lagarde's good relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel is critical in trying to get Germany to move faster to increase Europe's own firewall.

Is she frustrated then that Mrs Merkel isn't doing more?

"It's a matter of patience, it's a matter of resilience, and I'm not going to give up", she says. "[Merkel] does not want to be rushed into a process unless she has covered all the angles and all the issues. I think it is one of her many, many talents."

It is exactly the way Ms Lagarde herself operates.

Look at the group photos from the endless European summits and it is not lost on anyone that two of the most important figures are women, operating in a largely male world.

Ms Lagarde wishes there were more. She says she firmly believes that if it had been Lehman Sisters instead of Lehman Brothers, the financial crash might never have happened. But then perhaps, she wouldn't have taken the job she did, and we wouldn't have the first female head of the IMF.

The last time we meet, Christine Lagarde says Europe is now at least moving in the right direction. But there are caveats.

The woman who says she wakes up every morning wondering "where is it going to crack," is naturally cautious. Too much can still go wrong.

"I don't think we're out of the woods yet. Let's put it that way."

Ms Lagarde has not yet got firm commitments for her global fund. This week she is on the road again, back in Brussels, trying to persuade European leaders they have to help themselves before asking for more help from others.

Mitt Romney's son, Josh, explained why his father's experience makes him the ideal candidate.

The normally sleepy breakfast place, which serves mean pancakes and excellent coffee, by the way, hosted former Senator Rick Santorum, the Republican flavour of the week.

Mr Santorum has spent months assiduously wooing Iowa voters but it is only in the past few days that local opinion polls have registered a swift uptick in his support here. As a result his campaign events - which only last week were quiet, lonely affairs - are now a scrum.

The voters in the Reising Sun were far outnumbered by the reporters who had come from all around the world to hear him speak. Who knew the Japanese and Swedes were so interested in the policies of the former senator from Pennsylvania?

Rick Santorum is enjoying this attention for the same reason Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain before him got their five minutes in the spotlight: Republicans are not in love with the front-runner, Mitt Romney.

They are still looking for a candidate who can excite conservatives. Having tried and discarded a string of others, they are focusing on Rick Santorum.

But Mr Santorum is more than just the latest non-Romney candidate. In Polk City he displayed an earnest authenticity that goes down well. Voters here like his long, serious answers.

After listening to him for almost an hour, the local mayor, who told me beforehand he was undecided, said he was now going to support Mr Santorum because he was impressed with him and believed he was genuine.

He also liked the fact that the senator is solidly socially conservative. Mr Santorum is known for his opposition to gay rights and illegal immigrants, and as a fiscal conservative he supports privatising social security and balancing the budget. That too goes down well in Iowa.

So can he go all the way? As he told me after meeting the voters: "This isn't my first rodeo. I have been through this and I think we can hang on to the horse."

For two days here in Iowa, Rick Santorum is getting the kind of press attention usually bestowed on a pack leader. But he's still a long shot for the nomination - he had better enjoy this excitement while he can.

And yet Christopher made the evening one of the most pleasant of my life when, at drinks afterwards, he told me I had never been hotter.

I was eight months pregnant. After that he could do no wrong in my eyes.

Hitchens: Erudite, honest flirt

I mean that in the best European sense of the word - harmlessly but fully appreciative of the art.

I had the uncomfortable misfortune of sitting between Christopher and his nemesis George Galloway on the Bill Maher show once. The two loathed each other so much they would not even look at me in the middle for fear of catching each other's eyes.

And yet Christopher made the evening one of the most pleasant of my life when, at drinks afterwards, he told me I had never been hotter.

I was eight months pregnant. After that he could do no wrong in my eyes.

Mr Galloway, for the record, did not stand a chance on the show. Hitchens ran intellectual circles round him with the glee and humour of a small boy destroying a cheap toy.

The first was that the last time global unemployment was this high was in the 1930s - and we all know what happened then (source: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the IMF, but that's another story).

The second was that the top 1% of Americans took just 8% of the nation's wealth back in 1979 and now take 25%.

I increasingly think I was wrong to see them as two separate things; they are simply two sides of the same discontented coin.

Americans, by and large, do not mind other people getting rich. It is one of the big differences between them and Europeans.

A steel mill worker in Iowa told me during the 2008 presidential campaign that he did not mind John Edwards, former Democratic candidate for the presidency - yet another story - getting a $400 (£249) haircut because the candidate had worked hard and earned his fortune honestly.

It was, he said, part of the American Dream and something all citizens could aspire to.

But now the evidence suggests all citizens cannot aspire equally.

As the rich take an ever greater share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) there is less of it for everyone else - that's the thing about pies.

The people at the bottom are finding it harder and harder to get to the top. Middle-class jobs are being replaced by machines and Chinese workers.

The welfare state - the "free" education, health and welfare that might help the poor get their first leg up - is fast eroding.

The result: America's famed mobility system has got blocked.

The truth is that a De Moines steel mill worker was never going to be a multi-millionaire, but the Dream was founded on him believing that he could be.

When the belief goes, you get discontent.

We are still a long way from 1930s Europe, but when you get high unemployment combined with a growing sense that it is not even worth trying to move up because the system is a closed one, then the outcome does not look good.

Vicente Fox, who was president from 2001 to 2006, said consumption of drugs in the US was at the root of the problem and he called for the legalisation of drugs in America.

Forty-five thousand people are estimated to have been killed since Mexico's current President Felipe Calderon launched his war on the drug cartels five years ago.

Speaking to the BBC's Katty Kay, Mr Fox said it was time to withdraw the military and to seek an alternative strategy.

New figures have emerged showing that a child dies of abuse or neglect every 5 hours in the United States.

The US has the worst record of child abuse in the industrialised world with death rates significantly higher than those in Europe.

To discuss why child abuse is such a problem in the US, Michael Petit, the President of Every Child Matters, spoke to the BBC's Katty Kay.

OK, he wasn't quite as discreet with the swear word, but my editors will frown if I replace the asterisks with the actual letters.

But seriously, how angry can you really sound if you begin your revolutionary bank-bashing with the words love and humanity? It is somehow so very un-European.

It's hard to imagine, for example, the hooded youths of the London riots pausing between rock throwing and shop-looting to utter poetic affection for their fellow human beings.

Their priority was Sony or Samsung (stolen plasma TVs that is), not sitting down with their political opponents to figure out the country's economic problems.

Nor do these Occupiers of Wall Street yet have the fury of the tens of thousands who turned out in Athens again last week to protest government cuts.

Those youths smashed paving stones and hurled rocks. They were met in return with police firing tear gas.

Teachers, air traffic controllers and even jail wardens all joined the general strike against the government's austerity measures.

Unemployment in Greece has hit a depressing 16% since the cuts began, so perhaps it's not surprising that violence has struck the capital. And remember, last year, three bank workers died during Greek protests.

Even the schoolchildren who turned out in Spain were more numerous than their American counterparts.

Some 85% of students in the capital Madrid boycotted classes last Thursday as part of a nationwide protest against the government's cuts to the education budget.

"Less vultures, more desks" read one slogan. Youth unemployment in Spain is running at 40%, so it's not surprising that students are somewhat less than happy.

No, the most extraordinary thing about the US protests so far is that they have been so mild.

It took Americans a long time to jump on the European protest wagon and now they've finally done so, it's with exemplary order and calm. Given how rough the American economy is, that's quite surprising.

We all know people who can't find a job, who are struggling to pay bills, who pass through the Safeway checkout fearful that food prices have risen again since last week's grocery shop.

And we see the numbers about growing inequality in America.

In these times of job cuts and extreme hardship, the fact that the wealthiest 1% of the country took 8% of the GDP three decades ago, but now gobble up 25% of the total economic pie might be enough to make some people reach for their molotovs.

So it's interesting that - barring the one incident of pepper spray used against demonstrators on Brooklyn Bridge - the nice people camping out in Zuccotti Park have been well, so nice.

And it's not that Americans can't riot - they've done so with force in the past. Remember Vietnam, LA, the race riots in Detroit?

But those were in the 1960s. In recent decades protests in the US seem to have become more peaceful, even more subdued.

That other political protest movement of recent times, the Tea Party, might get fired up by their deeply held convictions, but they certainly don't riot.

The same quality of civic duty and lawfulness that foreigners find so distinctive about American life in general has dictated the mood of the economic protests as well.

Occupy Wall Street shares the same concerns as the Anger of the Acropolis, but so far, not the deadly stone throwing.

In my interview with Mr Blair, he admitted that gaps between the two sides' positions still exist, but that the "basic elements" were "pretty much clear and agreed".

The former British prime minister spoke as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas submitted his bid to the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state on Friday.

Funny how smoke doesn't gracefully billow when there's that much of it. It pours out, angrily, aggressively and if uglily were an adverb it would do that too.

I was in a taxi on my way to the bureau when my editor called my mobile, on what must have been one of the last calls to get through that day, and told me he could see smoke coming out of the Pentagon and I should go there instead.

I crossed the river to Virginia and got to the Pentagon 20 minutes after the hijacked plane burst a hole in the South West side of the building.

As everyone who was here remembers it was an incongruously beautiful September morning and the lawns which surround the Pentagon were already crowded with young men and women.

With the bright blue sky and warm autumn sun, for a bizarre moment I remember thinking it looked more like a scene from a college brochure than the evacuation of a building under attack.

Most of the soldiers I interviewed that morning were calm and determined to focus on doing what they could to help. A couple though were visibly shaking, stunned, as we all were by the enormity of what had just happened.

One man told he was still in his car when he heard the roar of the plane just overhead. He thought at the time it was strange that a plane should be flying that low.

I left the Pentagon to walk back into DC to the office. There were no taxis by then, only gridlock.

The route took me across the Washington Mall where under some trees I found a group of babies lying their cots, gurgling contentedly up at the leaves.

On the side of each cot was taped a sign with the words "Evacuation crib." The infants had been evacuated from the creche of a nearby federal office building.

Those babies were probably the only humans in Washington that day who didn't know what had just happened.

You slip into professional gear at times like that. It's easier to be a reporter than face the terror of being a parent.

It was only when I got home at midnight and lay on the bed with my sleeping five-year-old daughter that the tension of the day gave way to fear of what was to come.

There were Humvees in our neighbourhood, military jets flying overhead and the prospect of dirty bombs made us particularly anxious. Should we get the kids out of town and if so how and where?

It seems sort of silly today, but we looked around the house and wondered which room would be easiest to seal off if something poisonous was released into the air.

The following week the children returned to school and apart from a minute's silence and a morning spent learning the words to America the Beautiful, their lives were remarkably unchanged. If only that were true for everybody else.

They are President Bush's second inaugural and candidate Barack Obama's speech on race. And to be totally honest I can't even remember them in great detail; it's more the flavour than the specific words that stay with me.

Now I have a really abysmal memory, but only two speeches in 15 years? Even I ought to be able to do better than that. If those speeches were so important, wouldn't I be able to recall them better? Which got me thinking (a little hopefully, perhaps). Maybe it's not my addled brain but the speeches themselves. Maybe presidential speeches are unmemorable because they don't have much lasting impact.

Ever since the days of Franklin D Roosevelt's fireside chats we like to think words uttered from the most powerful man in the world will change history. After all, if the guy in the Oval Office can't bully his way out of the pulpit with nifty speeches, who can? Indeed, Roosevelt's 30 presidential radio addresses really did change events. Historians now credit much of the success of the New Deal with both the content and the delivery of Roosevelt's evening chats.

But times have changed, and so have we journalists.

We esteemed members of the fourth estate make a big deal of a set piece speech by an American president. We get reporters to cover the event, we schedule extra air time, pray for extra ads, and dissect every line for its "newsiness".

But maybe we're wrong. Presidents no longer change America by giving a great speech. They don't even shift the needle on public opinion in support of one policy or another.

For his book On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit, political scientist George Edwards studied the major speeches of every recent American president. "If the point of presidential speeches is to move public opinion - and that's certainly what most of us think - they simply don't work," he writes.

Public opinion, Mr Edwards argues, shifts because of events, not words. This suggests the fireside chats were the exception, not the rule. In fact, even FDR couldn't rely on swaying the country solely with words. "It was true even with Franklin Roosevelt before World War II. The country moved when Hitler did things, rather than when FDR made a speech."

Frozen weather, fi e ry warnings

So let's take the two speeches I do recall as test cases of whether a presidential address really matters. Why do I remember those two speeches more than others? Was there a consequence to those words which made them more memorable, more significant?

On the freezing morning of his second inauguration, George W Bush promised fire and brimstone on anyone in the world who didn't sign up to the freedom agenda. It was a post 9-11 speech, positioning America on the side of angels around the world. Again, that's flavour, not words. What Mr Bush actually said was, "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

There have been hundreds throughout history, but only a few stand out

He followed with an equally bold promise that America would indeed ensure that the meek inherit the earth, or, in the president's own words "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

Grand promises notwithstanding, that speech did not mark a radical change in US policy. America continued to befriend Egypt and Uzbekistan, to name just a couple of unsavoury relationships, whilst it also continued to allow the innocent citizens of Darfur to die in what a senior administration official called a genocide. The meek, I'm sorry to say, are still scrapping over the crumbs of a measly inheritance.

The reason I remember that speech is because even as I stood there, shivering on the Washington Mall, warning bells rang clear and loud in my mind. Here was the gulf between America and her allies. As much as the interventionist ideals promised in that address would be lauded by those who had voted for Mr Bush's re-election, it would send shivers of horror down the spines of the growing ranks of people around the world for whom America had become dangerously unilateral.

I'm not passing judgement on whether the reactions of either side were justified, but that speech symbolised the alarming gap in trans-Atlantic relations that came to be known as anti-Americanism.

It was a period of my time in the United States that I found particularly upsetting. Maybe that's why I remember the 43rd president's second inaugural so clearly - not for the policies that ensued but for what it said about that moment in history.

What about Barack Obama's campaign speech on race? I defy anyone, whether they voted for him or not, to say that wasn't moving and powerful. For a black candidate in an era of dog-whistle politics, it was a gamble: tackling head on one of the trickiest subjects in America. And he did so with grace and generosity, from the unique standpoint of someone of mixed race.

He described his white grandmother, who raised him and who he loved, being scared of black men. She was "a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." No white candidate could have said that this openly.

Mr Obama didn't shy away from talking about black resentment either. "That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table... occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."

The speech ended with a call to unity and was generally deemed inspiring, but did it change race relations in America? Not really. Nor did it lift millions of African Americans out of poverty or change the fact that US prisons are so disproportionately populated with black men.

It may have helped Barack Obama get elected, and that may have afforded some African-Americans an enduring sense of pride, but the link to the speech itself is tenuous. And many black Americans would today complain that Mr Obama has not done enough to fulfil their hopes that he would transform their lives for the better.

Once again, the reason this speech is memorable is not because it changed America - it didn't. What it did do was address the most hyper-sensitive issue in this country with unique frankness. It was the candour as much as the result that made it stick in my mind.

Poll numbers agree with my poor memory. Presidential speeches aren't important because they don't change public opinion or policy. That's almost certainly true of President Obama's speech on jobs. It doesn't matter what he says. All that matters is what he does.

I realise that sounds trite, but the only thing that will create jobs are hard-won policies that result from hours spent negotiating with Congress on legislation that will stimulate growth. Legislation, for example, to reform taxes and mortgage policy. Yes, I hear you yawn.

Back-room deals struck in the grey corridors of Washington office blocks aren't nearly as glamorous as beautiful words delivered to the illustrious Houses of Congress, but they are a lot more effective.

I'll be here in print, video and any other form my editors deem appropriate.

As we head into the 2012 election it's going to be an exciting year in US politics and I'd love to get your feedback too.