And he also understood that that foundation was crumbling, literally crumbling.

Belgium is in danger of falling apart.

If the periphery economies are allowed to collapse, developed countries will also be hurt.

When their absorptive capacities are reached, natural systems are liable to collapse into unproductive states.

If the First Lady wears a headscarf, maintained the secular minded elite, the whole secular system could be undermined.

Expansions usually start collapsing when labor gets too scarce and too expensive.

Critics of Vladimir Putin s regime argue that Russia s political system is too centralized and risks collapse in today s economic storm.

And, unlike the Great Depression, this time the financial system was put on artificial life support, rather than being allowed to collapse.

With the exception of a small number of ideologically committed defenders of free enterprise, few were willing to take the risks inherent in letting major banks collapse.

It is proof that in a globally interdependent world, walls are unnatural and artificial and thus doomed.

In the other session, 55 of participants foresaw stagnation in the next ten years (with 41 projecting growth and 4 expecting collapse).

PRINCETON Since the 2008 financial crisis, most industrial economies have avoided anything like the collapse that occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930 s.

This is good news for China s economy, but disappointing, perhaps, to those who assumed that the government would allow the bubble to grow bigger and bigger, eventually precipitating a crash.

While most major economies in their early stages of growth suffered crises, China s story seems abnormal (or accidental), and has elicited periodic predictions of an upcoming crash.

Gul s wife s headscarf was interpreted as the symbol of darker changes to come. If the First Lady wears a headscarf, maintained the secular minded elite, the whole secular system could be undermined.

Perverse incentives fueled excessive risk taking, and banks that are near collapse but are too big to fail will engage in even more of it.

It is disheartening to note that coral reefs are now under serious threat of collapse owing to over fishing and the development of coastal zones, which includes dredging, landfills and terrestrial run off, as well as climate change.

Any financial institution that is too big or too interconnected to fail, or could quickly become so, must be closely regulated and monitored for risk and capital adequacy in real time, or be broken up into smaller firms.

In November, Australia and New Zealand were given reassurances that Singapore would not be allowed to fall, and that in the event of war with Japan, the defence of the Far East would take priority over the Mediterranean.

Unlike the Japanese experience, this crisis involved the entire world, rather than being confined to a single country. And, unlike the Great Depression, this time the financial system was put on artificial life support, rather than being allowed to collapse.

While there may be some factors that signal turning points a run up in short term leverage and asset prices, for example, often presages a bust they are not infallible predictors of trouble to come.

For more than six months, the country has been unable to form a government that is able to unite the French speaking Walloons (32 ) and Dutch speaking Flemish (58 ). The Belgian monarch, Albert II, is desperately trying to stop his subjects from breaking up the state.

No news story that day discussed economic fundamentals or gave a clear indication of the cause of the decline, relying instead on sensational prose the house that Jack built threatened to topple over and traders were quaking in their boots. But the December 6, 1928, event began a sequence of increasingly severe one day drops in the Dow over the course of the following year.