In the last days of capitalism, politicians and journalists fell over themselves to reassure the populace that the old power structures would suffice.
At the end of the eleventh year of the third millennium, in an increasingly farcical and self deluded series of meetings, leaders of the old world repeated to their electorates that they could restore the proper functioning of their economic system.
However, the oligarchs of the financial-corporatocracy that held sway in those times thought otherwise, and the superstructures of the free-market economy cracked and heaved under the pressure of the fault lines that continued to widen.
Finally, the three power brokers of Europe split, with the Anglo Saxons refusing to be subjugated by the arbitrary rule of a hurriedly erected European suprastate led by the kingdoms of France and Germania. Heavy with dread and inevitability, the much portended twelfth year ground and shuddered into place.