2012, here we come.... (#34)

In much the same way that the stench of corruption and a trail of floozies couldn't bring down Silvio Berlusconi, but the collective agitation of the bond market could, the spectre of international terrorism turns out to be a less effective tool for dismantling democracy than that of major financial disorder.

That the plutocrats fear poverty as much as death (and certainly more than the deaths of their fellow citizens somewhere lower down the scale) is something that eventually occurred to the IRA in the latter stages of their campaign when they switched from targeting random civilians and the occasional politician, to attempting to raze large parts of London's financial districts to the ground.

So we can slot financial crisis somewhere in between nuclear meltdown and army of suicide bombers on the scale of international fear catalysts. And we can see from the repeated use of the word 'contagion' over the past few months that this particular panic considers itself almost equivalent in overall scariness to a global pandemic of the biological sort.

We can also understand why those in a position to define public information have been so keen on the notion of the dirty bomb, which combines the unmatchable horror of seeping radioactivity with the similarly unseen threat of the enemy within. Then all one has to do is suggest that Wall Street would be high on the list of potential targets for such a device...