According to the Census Bureau, more than 20 million of us would live in penury if not for the program.

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She and her colleagues evaluated a programme in the Indian state of West Bengal, where Bandhan, an Indian microfinance institution, worked with people who lived in extreme penury.

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The U.S. government is not alone in its penury.

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Italian governments have tinkered with the pensions system on three occasions, but have shrunk from the drastic overhaul that is needed to save Italy's greying population from old-age penury in the generation ahead.

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All these conditions left the expelled in a state of abject penury after weeks of suffering.

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But in its brutal structure of white power and black penury, apartheid also contained visceral drama, stories of humanity willing and waiting to break out in a demotic exuberance which in his township work Mr Fugard caught so well.

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Meanwhile, foreign banks operating in Cyprus will probably head for the hills, knowing that an economy already in recession will probably now contract at a rate of knots - causing penury to many.

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