The same cycle of attack and counter-attack plays out in a dozen Lewinsky sub-plots.

ECONOMIST: The press in the spin cycle

The last attempt at a truce, brokered by Mr Abbas in 2003, quickly collapsed into a cycle of attack and counter-attack.

ECONOMIST: Abbas wins a popular mandate | The

The discovery of these bodies, so soon after the blows against the protected Shia neighbourhood and the Askariya shrine, can be expected to feed the cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals in the days ahead.

ECONOMIST: Iraq

Whether Tuesday's attacks prove to be a brief setback, or the start of a new cycle of attacks and counter-attacks that blows apart the truce, will to a great extent depend on how Israel now responds.

ECONOMIST: Call this a ceasefire?

And now we see after this disputed election, the country descending into the kind of cycle and spiral of violence, counter reprisal, often on an ethnic basis, which we've seen elsewhere, including in Europe by the way, which looks as if it's very hard to stop.

NPR: Weighing International Aid for Kenya

One possible counter-argument is that this correlation may simply show that different economies are at different stages of the cycle: when an economy is growing strongly, employment rates for both the old and the young are likely to be high.

ECONOMIST: Why the old should not make way for the young