To me, the most amazing thing about the world's current state of financial affairs is not its dismal condition and uncertain future, but the lack of outrage and consequent demand for a viable explanation as to exactly how it got the way it did.

As in Citizen Kane, I hear a man shouting "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" but as usual no one is listening!

Here in the US, in recent years, I've seen more and more shoddy and inexpensive products appear, made by American companies in foreign plants, watched upper administrative and executive salaries skyrocket, particularly in comparison to the costs of labour and production, and observed the gap between rich and poor steadily widen, while crime, corruption and greed ran on, rampant and quietly unreported.

'Global marketplace boom'

Technological progress, world population increase, and modern financial capability and expertise, so it seems, are all being maximised and exploited on the part of the affluent classes at the expense of the rest.

This 'global marketplace boom' like all booms before it, is obviously going bust even as it begins and, at least as far as ordinary people in individual nations are concerned, what hope they might have had for better jobs, homes, roads and schools is fading fast, while their fears of growing catastrophes are being tragically realised.

I hear leaders talk of change, but is our only hope to create another boom? Or do we need to establish a baseline, a working model, and a middle ground for manageable growth, prosperity and economic stability? How will we yet succeed if we do not learn the lessons of our failures and not to repeat them?

I am, etc.,

ED MCCOY

mhobo48@juno.com

Florida