Egypt boils over with rage
First, you must sell allegedly “friendly” governments lots of weapons. You know, aircraft, missiles, guns, ammunition, that sort of stuff. It helps a lot if the governments have money, and it helps even more if you can convince them to peg their currencies in some way to yours, and they have something you want (think oil.)
Next, having accomplished the currency peg and sales of arms, you then allow your banks to engage in rampant speculation and fraud. You let them counterfeit your currency with impunity by issuing credit unbacked by anything (which spends exactly the same as does currency, and thus is an effective naked short upon it), so long as they bribe Congress sufficiently with “campaign contributions.” This is all legal, of course, and where it isn’t you change the law (such as through the CFMA) so it becomes legal.
<snip>
That’s when you find out what the balance of power really looks like between government and the people. Even in a monstrously-repressive regime such as Egypt, the fact remains that when the people have had enough, the government is fooked.