How to fix the financial mess in this country.

I am not convinced that an interest rate rise is the way to go right now. Sure, we are all cheesed off with the peanut returns on our savings but a decent return can only be paid when others are paying to borrow it at higher rates and I din't believe the money is likely to be there, short to medium term.

Our financial mess is simply a reflection of global recession and I think this goes far beyond interest rates and the housing market, although admittedly both suffer as a result. The global recession, I believe, has come about as a revolution in the way that we interact with one another, socially and financially. People only earn money by virtue of the fact that they are providing a product or service that has a value to another ... if that value gets corrupted through greed, power struggles or sheer inanity, then such values can never be balanced in a real world and the term 'vibrant economy' is nowhere to be seen.

We are going through a metamorhosis of economic change, and as I have said before, almost a revolution in the way that money changes hands to the point where financial sanity has vanished. A 'living wage' is an unknown commodity nowadays, or at least is becoming increasingly so.

Having said all of that, I believe that there is some sense in what you say, it's just the unpredictability of it all that scares me. Perhaps the 'real crash' does need to happen ... perhaps then we can all start again and 'rise from the ashes' so to speak. It's just the casualties along the way that concern me.

I don't believe we live in a world of values any more, it's pretty much dog eat dog and the devil may care about the rest. NO government can remedy that although they can strive to maintain law and order which is vital when the fabric of financial security breaks down.

And there are so many things to factor in to the puzzle .. people living longer, immigration, greed, the deterioration of simple human values and respect for each other, the domination of bureaucracy and the fact that there are far too many people in this world not providing any value or worth to the rest .... it never pays for a hundred people to lay railway tracks, build the trains and run them while another hundred ( or even thousands ) simply 'spot' the trains as they pass by. I hope you understand my analogy here.

No we cannot spend our way out of recession but we do need to rationalise and deal with existing debt ... in a way perhaps that has never been done before. To give a basic example, if an average man has a £7000 credit card debt, he may well say that the figure is insurmountable and as such decide it simply can't be dealt with and 'bury it' in his mind. All the enforcement in the world will not help that situation if fluid money is not there. But, if that man agrees to pay it back at say £1 a week and is joined in a similar fashion by another thousand similar debtors, that one company has a thousand pounds a week income, which can only increase as solvency returns. Not a great return I admit but at least it's income from the investment of debt and debt alone. And of course the only way that would succeed is for the global acceptance of such practice but I can only see sheer ongoing greed and paranoia decimating such attempts. But is it such a silly suggestion?

Sad to say, we live in a cold and calculating world but if we can just 'warm' it up, soften attitudes and get our 'exchange of values' right, we may just stand a chance. Otherwise I fear we are going to experience extreme levels of poverty in 2012.