There were riots in Greece last week just four years after Athens hosted the Olympics (and several months after the media started to ask was it worth it? The proximate cause? An incident of police brutality after clashes between police and protesters left one 15-year old teenager dead. 

But of course the roots go much deeper.

I asked yesterday for readers to connect the dots for me.

Today I do the connecting.

Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be called the first credit-crunch riots. There have been smaller-scale sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest.

“I’ve seen the future and it will be.” 

For an interesting meta-analysis, check out Buster, bout to be added to the RSS feed.