Nobel Prize winning economist and former vice-president of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, praised Venezuela's economicgrowth and "positive policies in health and education" during a visit to Caracas on Wednesday.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has not yet presented her economic agenda, but one of the economists she has turned to for advice has published an aggressive blueprint for rewriting 35 years of policies that he says have led to a vast concentration of wealth among the richest Americans and an increasingly squeezed middle class.