And it begins

Today, the house of the former head of RBS (the one behind the collapse of the bank, thereafter rewarded with a multi-million pension) was vandalized. The people behind the attack have the profile of a bunch of aspiring anarchists about whom nothing is known. In France, workers at a 3M (the US corporation) plant have been holding its boss hostage since last night after dozens of workers were laid off. The same happened at a Sony factory some days earlier. The Czech Republic Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek referred to the US recovery plan as "a way to hell". At the same time, he announced he will resign tomorrow after loosing a no-confidence vote yesterday over his handling of the economic situation in his own country. Curiously, he is also the current rotating President of the European Union (EU), and will attend the G20 summit in London next week as such. Meanwhile, yesterday the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown delivered a very important speech on the way to tackle the global recession to a near empty EU Parliament. His strategy to print out money to help boost the British economy got some feedback from the market today, when an auction for ordinary government bonds undersold. The last time something like this happened was in 1995. President Barack Obama emulated the print-out-money strategy last week, but only by about $1 trillion (one trillion is one thousand billions, or $1,000,000,000,000). Bear in mind that nowadays it is not called printing money, but quantitative easing or expanding a balance sheet. This is a course of action that leading financial institutions, like the IMF, advised time and again developing governments not to do in the past. It is neither known if it would work nor its longer-term inflationary consequences, and so on.

Since January, we have written about a dozen posts that we decided in the end not to publish. They deal with rising levels of petty crime, low-level violence, and popular anger reaching a boiling point. The umbilical cord connecting government to people is disintegrating in many parts of the world. Ironically, and for those who can be within its reach, private security is suddenly becoming a blessing rather than a menace. There is something horrible brewing out there and we dare not to think the unthinkable. But the few words above give you an idea of what is at stake.