Financial looters run riot, and there's rebellion in the air

Widespread riots, arson and looting across London and other English cities sent shockwaves around the world. As far away as Japan, people were asking if Britain was safe any more, and one German politician suggested moving next year's Olympic Games to Germany.

British Prime Minister David Cameron blamed street gangs and opportunistic looters and declared that criminality would be punished. Magistrates and judges duly obliged. The dust settled.

What happened in Britain is part of the continuing decline of the West, evidence of which can also be seen in the politics and the economics of the US, continental Europe and Japan. Cartoonists on both sides of the Atlantic put a different spin on the English riots, depicting financiers in swanky stretch limousines driving away with bags of cash to the applause of politicians, while hooded looters steal, through broken shop windows, a single pair of sneakers or a television set.

Cameron conceded that he had a job ahead to tackle '120,000 most troubled families' in a 'social and security fightback' against what he termed the 'slow-motion moral collapse' of Britain. Former prime minister Tony Blair rushed to deny that Britain was in a state of moral decline, and tried to brush aside any connections between the looting on the streets and the high salaries of bankers. He would, wouldn't he, since it was he who, following Margaret Thatcher's damage of British industry, boosted London's role as the centre of a supposedly winning service economy.

It should be worrying that high financial salaries on both sides of the Atlantic are accompanied by a sense of entitlement with no understanding about what is going on in the rest of the economy.

Western economies, including Japan's, are in a mess and marked by slow growth, unsustainable levels of debt, an overpaid overclass, a growing underclass and a massive army of unemployed. Yet some people have never had it so good. Corporate profits in the US are at record levels of almost US$1.7 trillion. Multibillionaire Warren Buffett urged the government to stop coddling the super-rich.