A pyramid pummeled: Albania's financial crisis

International | Failed get-rich-quick schemes lead to anarchy then martial law; capitalist excesses threaten Eastern European freedom | Mindy Belz

American missionary Von Golder admitted to being a little more ready to pay taxes this year after watching a Marine Corps CH-43 gunship lift off from Tirana last weekend with his family aboard. Mr. Golder's wife and three children were among more than 400 Americans evacuated from Albania after weeks of protests and rioting turned into civil skirmishes and wholesale looting.

"These are days of weeping and fear in Albania as the Lord does surgery on us," Mr. Golder wrote to friends via e-mail following his family's departure March 14. The collapse of pyramid investment schemes that has engulfed the country in anarchy threatens to undo fledgling Christian churches as well. Protestant churches have been legal in the former communist country for less than a decade; they have shallow roots to withstand the violence and deprivation now sweeping the country.

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