Back in 2001, just after 9/11, the Economist ran a cover with the headline The Day the World Changed. It felt right at the time. But when historians come to look back at our times I wonder if, vile as it was, that will really be the event they note as the trigger for the western world changing.
Instead, if you look around you now you might wonder if it was instead the poster moment of the financial crisis – the fall of Lehman Brothers.
After all, the crisis is clearly changing global politics as fast as it is global finance. These things are obviously complicated but you can make a case that the Arab Spring was precipitated by fast rising food prices – something you can easily blame on QE – a clear and direct result of the financial crisis.