Debt

In pictures, from BBC

And, according to the Telegraph

The global credit system is flashing the most serious warning signals in almost a year on triple fears of a Spanish banking crisis, escalating political risk in Asia, and a second leg to the US housing slump.

So maybe UK journalists have stopped being distracted by the new government, and the period of apparent calm between the election and yesterday's Queen's Speech. At least they're now catching up with the blogosphere and are writing about the financial situation that will affect us all.

But it might not, eventually, be all gloom and doom, as Simon Heffer says

... we may indeed be about to see an economic debacle of unprecedented proportions in the recent history of the developed world. We shall just have to steel ourselves for it. It may, though, have the legacy of ending the neo-sovietisation of our continent, and allowing a resurgence of democracy in Europe and among European peoples; which would prove, at last, that every cloud does indeed have a silver lining.

....