krudd gave 11.90 billion to us banks, page-12

Perhaps that was why we were advised last week - very quietly - that OUR banks have a crisis plan, JUST IN CASE we should end up "in trouble" like the USA.

Things are all relative - when I was a GIRL "IN TROUBLE " meant you came home pregnant and had to tell your mother-

Now , IN TROUBLE" means we are looking at a Global Depression, the like of which we have never seen before. With all our clever technology and all our clever ways of manipulating banking and money management in ways which are not illegal or dishonest - but they must at least be considered to be ethically questionable - our facility to change the rules so that we can legally sell what we don't own and then buy it back for less than we sold it for,ths making a profit; our licence to borrow more money than we will ever make on the premise that a property which we can't afford to buy will increase in value so much that we can, again, sell what we don't own and make a profit.

Surely this is Alice in Wonderland stuff- we bent the rules and like a faulty mirror in a sideshow, we got a distorted reflection of reality. The day when we have to pay the ferryman, is, I think, almost upon us.
Are the Americans clever enough to manage a society where the housing is all owned by finance companies or government departments; where 1000's of houses are left to rot due to foreclosures; where companies go broke at an unprecendented rate but it becomes inconvenient for the Governent to "bail them out" so the doors close ; where unemployment becomes the norm; poverty and deprivation the accepted standard of living?

Will the new president be able to wave his wand and throw enough money at the situation we have allowed to envelop us to save us all from ruin? How much money will that take? 10 billion ...20 trillion...it all becomes quite meaningless.

Maybe we are in for a societal and behavioural revolution...

we have had a technological revolution far more challenging than the industrial revolution, simply because of the numbers of people affected

....where our behaviours are forced to radically change. Maybe we will see a society whee we don't take more than we need, we share what we do have, where it becomes fashionable NOT to be wealthy, where we work hard and respect ourselves for that, not for how big the truck is that delivers the pay check.

I am not an alarmist- but i suspect we have a long long way to go before the GORDON GEKKO type "rules of fiscal excess" which have brought us to this point are finally and irrevocably brought under our control once again.

sorry, I don't watch footy so nothing better to do this week-end!!!

Poppi.