Global Policy Watch #1: How the Sri Lankan Economy Unraveled Insights on policy issues making news around the world — RSJ What people do when they storm palaces is broadly instructive about what comes next. In 1792, the French insurgents determined to end whatever remained of the ancien regime stormed the palace of Tuileries and confronted the Swiss Guards who were defending the palace on the orders of Louis XVI. Blood, gore and massacre followed, at the end of which about eleven hundred combatants were killed. These included, as J.M. Thomson wrote in his history of the French Revolution: ..common citizens from every branch of the trading and working classes of Paris, including hair-dressers, harness-makers, carpenters, joiners, house-painters, tailors, hatters, boot-makers, locksmiths, laundry-men, and domestic servants. The Bolsheviks were not to be outdone on the night of October 25, 1917, when they assaulted the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg on the orders of Lenin. The insurrectionists barely met with any resistance from the yunkers, the Cossacks and the women’s battalion guarding the palace. To quote John Reed from Ten Days That Shook The World (1935): On both sides of the main gateway the doors stood wide open, light streamed out and from the huge pile came not the slightest sound. Carried along by the eager wave of men, we were swept into the right hand entrance, opening into a great bare vaulted room, the cellar of the East wing, from which issued a maze of corridors and stair-cases.  ...One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another found a plume of ostrich feathers, which he stuck in his hat. The looting was just beginning when somebody cried, ‘Comrades! Don't touch anything! Don't take anything! This is the property of the People!’ Immediately twenty voices were crying, ‘Stop! Put everything back! Don't take anything! Property of the People!’ Many hands dragged the spoilers down. Damask and tapestry were snatched from the arms of those who had them; two men took away the bronze clock. Roughly and hastily the things were crammed back in their cases, and self-appointed sentinels stood guard. It was all utterly spontaneous. Through corridors and up stair-cases the cry could be heard growing fainter and fainter in the distance, ‘Revolutionary discipline! Property of the People.’ The Filipinos did things a bit differently on Feb 24, 1986. As this news report suggests: It started with a rock fight, then the gate was opened for a few photographers and the crowd pushed through into the palace the Marcos family occupied for 20 years, shouting and grabbing anything they could carry. They snatched clothes, shoes, perfume, monogrammed towels. Some wolfed food from the table at which Ferdinand E. Marcos and his family had dined before leaving in American helicopters for Clark Air Base and flight from the country. Thousands of people were outside Malacanang Palace when the photographers arrived Tuesday night. Supporters of Corazon Aquino, who became president when Marcos fled, and Marcos loyalists started throwing rocks at each other. They rushed through the gate, turning left to the administration building or right to the living quarters. Marcos loyalists followed them. The fights and looting started. Cheering, the rioters climbed on top of three tanks. One grabbed an ammunition belt. Others took guns. Cut to present-day Sri Lanka. It has a foreign debt of over US$ 50 billion. Its foreign exchange reserves are about US$ 50 million. Inflation is running at over 50 per cent. The Sri Lankan Rupee has fallen by 80 per cent since the start of the year. What’s worse is that no one knows who is keeping score. Former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country this week. Right now, he is in Singapore negotiating his asylum with friendly countries in the middle-east (why not China?). His brothers couldn’t get out of Sri Lanka in time. Gotabaya’s military pl