Now we have awakened to an existential crisis for the common currency.

At first glance, European social democracy appears to be in crisis.

What s different now is that a pox has been cast on both houses.

NEW YORK The world economy is being battered by sharply higher energy prices.

For seven centuries, Hungary and Romania have been engaged in wars over territory and peoples.

On the verge of civil war, Iraq just announced a restructuring of its foreign debt.

Europe is in the midst of a crisis whose root cause is a structurally flawed monetary and economic union.

Refugees leave their countries running away from wars, prosecution or dire economic conditions to face other hardships in Egypt.

The EU has created a zone of peace where once there was relentless war.

Instead of seeing real people in crisis, they see caricatures, a terrorist around every corner.

You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis.

Osborne argued that Britain was on the brink that there was no alternative to his policy if the country was to avoid a massive crisis of confidence.

Each of the three parts of Greater Europe Russia, the European Union, and the countries between them is in crisis.

Western governments have been accused of interference, but it is unlikely that any want to derail their relations with China, especially during an economic crisis.

We often think of history as something inevitable, a culmination of great, grinding forces that can only lead to one destination.

Moreover, there is an acute risk that the power vacuum created in Iraq will fuse the Israeli Arab conflict, Iraq, and Afghanistan into one regional mega crisis.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration did not foresee that Saddam s removal would precipitate a multi sided insurgency and civil war.

First, high household debt means that if interest rates rise, as they do in a normal recovery, households will find themselves strapped.

But it is not clear that this would be enough to remove the danger that an IMF decision, taken in response to deteriorating country policies, could precipitate a crisis.

And some emerging market economies despite massive IMF support will experience a severe financial crisis with contagious effects on other economies.

PRINCETON The world is confronted by a dramatic financial crisis that many policymakers believe is more severe than the interwar Great Depression.

An energy crisis in this case is almost certain if those who press for energy independence fail to provide a workable alternative in a timely manner.

He also has placed the World Bank at the center of the effort to help rebuild nations emerging from devastating civil conflict, from Bosnia to Sierra Leone to East Timor.

Biafra s attempted secession in 1967, and the subsequent civil war in which millions died, was triggered by rigged elections, massive official corruption, and the cynical use of ethnicity to achieve political ends.

Instead of distributing oil revenues through a program of low cost loans, as promised, the government has been forced to ration gasoline, as economic promise has given way to crisis.

So that is where the US is now in the middle of a financial crisis, with the economy sliding into recession, monetary policy already at maximum easing, and fiscal transfers impotent.

Latin America had a big debt crisis that broke out in 1982, but in fact there were almost no defaults (with the exception of Peru and, for a few months in late 1987, Brazil).

They have voted for continuity the core of Cristina s campaign because their situation is much improved since 2001, when the country was in the midst of economic and political crisis.

Ukraine, in particular, is in a perilous state, but financing public works that would create jobs in Eastern Ukraine, where the steel industry is in distress, could make a major difference both politically and economically.

This pattern was evident in Yugoslavia's wars of the 1990's, where ethnic communities that had lived together more or less peacefully became enmeshed in civil war in the midst of a deep economic crisis.

Both Europe and America can learn a lesson hidden in American history, for, lost in the haze of patriotic veneration of America s founders is the fact that they created a new country during and largely because of a crippling debt crisis.

Nonetheless, with Syria consumed in civil war and the wider Middle East already unsteady, a ceasefire is essential both for saving lives and preserving today s uneasy regional peace.

In the period from 1991 to 1993, nationalism was on the rise because Yeltsin s infant democracy seemed weak, with the country in the throes of a deep economic crisis, as well as an acute confrontation between different branches of government.

Allowing Indonesia and other countries to turn this issue into another rich poor, Islamic Western dispute would be tragic and could lead to a devastating health crisis anywhere and at any time.

The BRICS arose at a time when much of the world, especially the advanced economies, was mired in crisis. The fall of the West narrative ran alongside that of the rise of the rest.

The West is not only overlooking the new Chinese leaders enhanced skill set, but is also misjudging the current state of the country s economy, which, while far from perfect, is not crisis torn and in desperate need of a quick fix.

PRINCETON Britain s policy of fiscal consolidation, recently announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, sent shock waves around the world. Osborne argued that Britain was on the brink that there was no alternative to his policy if the country was to avoid a massive crisis of confidence.

NEW YORK The world economy is being battered by sharply higher energy prices. While a few energy exporting countries in the Middle East and elsewhere reap huge profits, the rest of the world is suffering as the price of oil has topped 110 per barrel and that of coal has doubled.

Latin America had a big debt crisis that broke out in 1982, but in fact there were almost no defaults (with the exception of Peru and, for a few months in late 1987, Brazil). Instead of defaulting, countries arranged rescue packages with the IMF.