You could look at these as coordinated "rats leaving a sinking ship", which in fact it probably is.

When the economy is tickling along nicely and everyone is making money and there is growth in the system - everyone's happy. When people are happy they tend to take stuff as it comes and bounce back from psychological knock-backs.

When everything goes to shit, people tend to hunker down to ride out the storm. But this time the storm is pretty much here to stay. It's all down hill from here. Even those people with money are carried along with the general mood of those about them.

The fact is thing are going to get ever worse, the rich have nowhere to run to. They live where they live, because they like the place, just like most other people. When you get stuck in a bad neighbourhood, upping sticks is not nice.

People who seek attention / power / money are as human as the rest of us. They also have far more to lose and farther to fall.

Queeny Lizzy probably has just got the shits from one of the dirt-bag toady queers that royalty seem to like surrounding themselves with. The Pope probably has had enough of the queers that have weedled their way into his entourage and the Vatican power structure.

My guess is is the symptoms of the beginning of the end of our great coal and oil civilization. The whole planet is incredibly sick.