Yesterday a group of the world’s brightest economists and financial leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., for spring conference meetings at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Truly, these fiscal Cassandras were the only people who predicted the current global financial crisis.

No, wait, not those guys. My apologies! Above, you see the president of the World Bank with the German development minister and French financial minister. Rather, it was the economists below who anticipated capitalism’s quick sunset.

They saw the writing on the wall, possibly because they spraypainted it there. But in this world, being right doesn’t always mean not getting maced. So when the antiglobalization crowd showed up yesterday to protest the IMF/World Bank meetings, it didn’t much matter that the markets themselves had done a pretty good job of showing that it’s not all biscuits and gravy in the free world. They approached the “barricades” with the same joyless purpose as ever, that is, with the singular hope that some cop would brutalize them. And some cops obliged!

Photos from the revolution follow, with bonus pictures from a surprise aerobics rally.