The snake was defanged.
The Government's new security supremo, Admiral Sir Alan West, said the danger from home-grown and foreign terrorists was at its greatest level ever, and warned that it could take up to 15 years to defang Islamic radicalism - The roots of terror,The Week, 14 July 2007, 622, 4.
For decades, consumers feasted relentlessly, as if gravity, arithmetic and the tyranny of debt had been defanged by financial engineering.