Sounds like Germany failing to pay UK/France who then failed to pay the US.

Who then brought in Smoot Hawley:

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was considered by many economists to be the single factor that transformed the U.S. recession into a global depression. The legislation was enacted on June 17, about 8 months after the collapse of the U.S. stock market. It quadrupled import tariffs on 20,000 goods, particularly agricultural products. Countries immediately retaliated, bringing international trade to a halt and depressing global demand. Ironically, the U.S. economy was showing signs of recovery by the spring of 1930. Unemployment stood at 7.8%, but the decline in global trade doubled the rate by 1931. The unemployment rate in the U.S. continued to climb, peaking at 25.1% in 1933. Although the decision to shelf the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia should not be considered to be a return to U.S. protectionism, the growing restrictions against food exports could be the start of a dangerous trend.-Roubini

but this time Russia waits with open arms and gas/oil
for the cold winter coming.

We've got til Sunday PM for something/

The WSJ website had the following headline, linked on yesterday's Drumbeat:

The Official Demise of the Oil Bubble

Jim Rogers noted that there have been at least two large price pullbacks since the current secular bull market started in 1999. That gave me the idea for the following

A What-If: Basically the same story, but written at the end of 2001:

In November, 2000 the price of crude oil averaged about $34 a barrel. What seemed like a bewildering ascent in the price of crude at the time is now a relief to traders, who watched oil fall $14 a barrel to average about $20 a barrel in November, 2001 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Like a number of other commodities, oil’s move went from a steady ascent to a vertical bounce in the fall of 2000, before speculative excess started to drain from the market. And those who believed that the oil price was justified by fundamentals — being, as it is, an actual product, rather than an Internet company’s vague promise of revenue — are smarting.

“This is a market that is basically returning to the price level of July, 1999, which it arguably should never have left,” says Evans Tims , energy analyst at Citigroup. “We pumped up a big bubble, expanded it to an impressive dimension, and now it is popped and we have bubble gum in our hair.”