Icelanders petition their government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/21/iceland-globalrecession

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLL97664

"Protest" is not the right word, because (according to the Guardian article), the petitioners are making "a clear demand for early election."

Video (the international standard: two obligatory young hooligans to discredit the peaceful many)

http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/sjonvarp/22325/

Failure of German bond sale - bad sign

German bond sale’s fate signals trouble ahead

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/16c7ceba-dcbe-11dd-a2a9-000077b07658.html

This is a bad sign, according to Illargi at Automatic Earth:

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-7-2009-name-is-bonds-obama.html

Obama warns of a $1 trillion US deficit this year. It’s obvious the deficit will be nearer $2 trillion, but you have to feed it to them bite-size. It'll easily be more than ten times the 2007 deficit of $162 billion, in an economy with a rapidly shrinking GDP. Obama expects the deficit to remain over $1 trillion (read: way over) for many years to come. But in a stark warning to Obama and the US, the Financial Times reports that the first German (10-year) bond issue of the year failed. Yes that's the country with the far more favorable job numbers. There are far less questions about German solvency than there are about the US, and you can bet that Washington pays attention to news like that.