Emerging markets

In retrospect, the path taken by a crisis often seems entirely predictable. It is easy, now, to draw a line from mass downgrades of structured credit in mid-2007 through the resulting funding and liquidity squeeze to huge losses, bank collapses and public bail-outs.

Given the benefit of a few months’ distance, observers of the Arab Spring can pull off the same trick, identifying one young Tunisian’s act of protest as the trigger for a wave of unrest that would sweep from one country to the next