Sri Lanka, & other countries, are looking like the canaries in the coalmine.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe: Sri Lanka is facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food. Our economy has completely collapsed.

That's not good news coming from the Captain of the Ship.

Currently, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is $US700 million ($1.02 billion) in debt. As a result, no country or organization in the world is willing to provide fuel to us. They are even reluctant to provide fuel for cash.

If steps had at least been taken to slow down the collapse of the economy at the beginning, we would not be facing this difficult situation today. But we lost out on this opportunity. We are now seeing signs of a possible fall to rock bottom.

I wonder if that last sentence could be extrapolated to the world economy ...

9 News: In Sri Lanka, people queue for kilometres to fill a tank of fuel. In Bangladesh, shops shut at 8pm to conserve energy. In India and Pakistan, power outages force schools to shut, businesses to close and residents to swelter without air conditioning through deadly heat waves in which temperatures top 37 degrees Celsius.

These are just some of the more eye-catching scenes playing out in the Asia Pacific region, where various countries are facing their worst energy crisis in years - and grappling with the growing discontent and instability caused by knock-on increases in the cost of living.

When people get hangry on a large scale - that's how revolutions happen.