Crash a Bank, Topple a Government?

Last week, Poland's stock market and currency plunged after a run on the country's largest bank inspired by news that the bank was transferring its clients' funds to Italy—a routine bank transaction but one that was reported in a far-right newspaper in sensational, nationalistic terms. The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum notes the ease with which the newspaper accidentally destabilized Poland and wonders, "If you wanted to destabilize a country, wouldn't this be an excellent time to do it?" She predicts that "political instability will follow economic instability like night follows day," and then fingers an unsettling likely victim: Pakistan, whose inflation rate is 25 percent and whose currency is in free fall.