Geoff Colvin‘s latest Fortune column assesses the “politically, economically, and culturally momentous news” contributing to a worldwide sense of chaos.

A is for anger. The whole world seems to be erupting in popular rage. In the U.S. the Occupiers are planning their spring comeback. Europeans from north to south are marching in the streets against austerity. Egyptians, Syrians, and Yemenis are dying as they rage against their rulers. The Wukan uprising is reshaping China’s political landscape. Protests by tens of thousands of furious Russians have shaken Putin like nothing before in his long reign.

Each case is unique, yet a couple of factors underlie them. In the developing world, it’s corruption. Authorities are violating the people’s will to enrich themselves, stealing money or, in a bogus democracy like Russia, stealing votes. In the U.S. and Europe it isn’t corruption but in large part the b factor.

B is for borrowing. Today’s anger in the West is fundamentally economic, and while our economic problems may seem infinitely complex, they can be summarized in three words of one syllable: too much debt. America’s federal government, state governments, financial corporations, and households all carry unsustainable debt. As they all try to deleverage simultaneously, our economy goes nowhere month after month, and citizens lash out. Southern Europeans simply cannot believe that their government-debt-fueled lifestyles were actually a Ponzi scheme that has finally reached its inevitable end; in Britain and Ireland, private debt is also impossibly high. Confronting the reality of too much debt is slow and excruciating. No wonder people are mad.