Quite reasonably anger has flooded in the direction of Rupert Murdoch and his acolytes over the last few days. More will follow and rightly so ove the coming week and months. Radical reform of politics, the press, libel law and more should follow, including a change of government. Cameron's complicity in all this is going to be hard to accept for long.

And yet, angry as we are about phone hacking and the press corruption emanating from Murdoch the harm that has caused is but nothing (without in any way trivialising it or the personal agony involved) compared to the crisis his media empire is about to help unleash on the world's economy.

Without Fox News it's very unlikely that the Tea Party would be in the position they are now in the USA. Because of Murdoch's support for them and the blatant political bias he brought to US news reporting they have seized control of parts of the US media and in turn the Republican Party. The result is that America is on the brink of defaulting on its debt.

It need not do so. There is no crisis: US debt remains completely saleable; if more were offered to the market in August it would be snapped up. So this is an issue entirely created in Washington by the American right wing in pursuit of its own agenda; an agenda that Fox has promoted.

An agenda that says Washington is the enemy. That regulation is bad. And tax worse still. And that the rich must be free of tax, and the poor must lose services to pay for that freedom. But nothing must touch US military spending since that keeps the rich rich as much as not paying tax does.

To put it another way, as Will Hutton said today:

President Obama has tried to fashion a bargain with a collection of right wing politicians that most in Washington regard as both mad and dangerous.

I think that's probably being polite. These people aren't even in touch with normal human discourse. They have no empathy with those who will suffer as a result of their actions - like the millions of pensioners who will be left without an income. And they have no respect for the rule of law - because they're going to willingly ignore the contractual obligatiuons the US has accepted to pay its debts - a debt they are saying they will not honour.

This is Murdoch's real legacy - the destruction of the state is what he aimed for, and in the US it's getting close to happening as zealots seek to destroy the country they claim they love.

We can hate Murdoch for his corruption of the UK's media and politics but in the US they're going to have much more to hate him for. And as the impact will ripple like a tsunami around the world's economies we're all going to feel the impact of his corrupt, perverted and dangerous logic - a perversion that seeks to undermine the very fabric of society.

Except, of course, we now know that Murdoch had no comprehension of what that fabric wa and what normal human empathy or concern for others was. He built the Tea Party in his own mould and the price of his doing so will be enormous.