To bring it around to current events... The French aren't rioting over the raising of the pension age, strictly speaking. That's how it's billed in the US, but we know how the US is about demonizing unions and glorifying the
rich.
They're rioting - inside the Paris HQ of BlackRock, no less - because BlackRock
administers the country's pension programs. BlackRock has been heavily invested in commercial real estate ventures that were identified as far back as 2010 as rotten, and riddled with the same CDO bombs that
brought down the US housing market in 2008. Now, those commercial CDOs are in trouble around the world and the company has responded by loading them into French pensioners' retirements so that when they collapse (and they will), the pensions will be
wiped out to float BlackRock through.
And the rioters are pissed at Macron, because he (a banker himself to start with) seized special powers under the French Constitution last month, and promptly rammed home the legislation that raises the pension age by two
years, without any vote. The French people are being told that, after a lifetime of work, they can't retire yet - and when they do they're going to lose it all anyway, just to keep Macron's banker buddies
rich.
Now THAT is a reason to burn it all down.