Are we into hard times?

The figures vary for other economies but lead to the same conclusions: we are not on "The Road to Recovery" and we are as fraudulent in claiming we are as we were three years and more ago in propagating the myth that the financial fraud of that time eliminated risk and would make us all rich.

In saying this, we must interpolate that there are some economies which have thrived not only during the financial mania before Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers but even in the widespread economic and financial collapse since.

For China, India and some others, any "collapse" has so far been modest.

Those economies have been dedicated throughout to real investment, real productivity and real production. They have continued to acknowledge the obvious truth that real wealth and higher real current incomes derive from real production of goods and services, not from shadow financial paper and brazen gambling on Wall Street.

But those realities have not been acknowledged by the developed countries of the West.

They have changed nothing fundamental in the economies and financial systems that caused their collapse. Instead they have embraced in panic or with gross, often criminal negligence policies whose main purpose has been to shore up failed economic and financial institutions.

The bankers including those "too big to fail" seemed briefly contrite but are now back in positions of power. They exploit the “new” system in the same old ways or better. Their rewards are obscene. Those who are, for the most part, innocent of blame suffer the "hard times".

They are not suffering alone. They have tens of millions of companions. However, they really have no one to go effectively into battle for them.

During the Great Depression, a multitude of political, economic and social movements attended to the interests of virtually every sector of Western communities. To the Left were the trade unions, socialist and communist parties, Douglas Credit and International Workers of the World. There were Fabians and Labour Parties; and, of course there were parties of the Right.

Especially since 1990, parties of the Left have collapsed with the demise of the Soviet Union. Few effective trade unions now distinguish major Western economies and little effective protection exists for that middle class which once formed the backbone of Western communities.

Centre and right-wing parties occupy the parliamentary benches. Although we have an awesomely powerful Wall Street, no one waves a banner for the little guy or the men and women in the middle.

We don't think the great media corporations are too big to fail; but with corporation money, they play the bankers' game. They sing the Wall-Street arias. During the Great Depression, the promise was that "prosperity is just around the corner". Today the media tell us that we're on the "Road to Recovery."