In France this week, we’ve seen a local story spread round the world in flaming images. On Sunday, two teenage boys in the impoverished Parisian suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were killed when the small motorbike they were riding collided with a police car. The incident sparked local riots among youth who blamed police for the teens’ deaths. (An official investigation into the collision is ongoing.)

Whatever the real cause of the accident, it evoked echoes of the national riots that spread across almost 300 similarly economically depressed towns and suburbs throughout the country-and fears that something similar could happen again.  Back in October 2005, two teenage boys were electrocuted when they sought refuge from police in a power sub-station in Clichy-sous-Bois, another downscale suburb of Paris with large minority populations. That incident resulted in 10,000 torched cars and 300 torched buildings over three long weeks. The tough-talking Interior Minister in charge of law and order then, Nicolas Sarkozy, is now president.

For the last two years running, bankers in London, New York and Tokyo have reaped record-breaking bonuses, sending bountiful ripples through their local economies in the form of everything from gasp-worthy bar bills to astronomical property prices. Many movers and shakers, buoyed by a record $3,300 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions activity globally in the first half of this year, were hoping that the coming bonus season would prove three’s the charm.

That was, of course, until America’s subprime mortgage crisis sent the global economy into a penny-pinching credit crunch.

Nick Hayes is an intern in our London bureau. He normally arrives to work on time, but not today. Here he tells us why: 

I just got a taste what life must have been like in Britain in the 70s -- when strikes erupted on a regular basis and angry workers engaged in running battles with the government of the day. Transport for London, the company that runs London's famous underground system, failed to come to terms with the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. The result has been chaos on the subway since Monday afternoon -- and this could stretch to the end of the week.