Nothing without Labour

The fate of Bernanke and his president might be more merciful but unpleasant nevertheless.

Trillions of dollars have been spent for virtually no result except to make a United States – and Western recovery – more difficult, more complex and more long drawn out than before.

Bearing in mind the "hedonic" features of American statistics, the United States is almost certainly in "recession" right now. The question is not whether the United States is in a double-dip recession. Rather it is in continuing recession deriving from long-lasting, fundamental, uncorrected errors of policy.

What is terrifying is that the situation is even more critical than three years ago. During those three years, the problems confronting the United States have become bigger and more menacing than ever,

Not only bigger and more menacing but even less well identified than ever and more subject to pointing fingers at others rather than accepting responsibility for putting their own house in order and helping others so as to promote global stability and peaceful change.

The United States has recently tended, for example, to highlight the sovereign debt of the Eurozone countries as the central threat to global stability. That may be planned to distract attention from its own massive debt and deficit, and from the highly unstable speculative financial system which still operates in the United States itself.

Alessio Rastani's view that it is not governments but "Goldman

Sachs [that] rules the world" is not funny. Not at all, because it reflects what many see as an everyday reality.

"The market," Rastani says, "is toast." After all the years spent in adoration of the market, it might seem a sacrilege to express such a thought – even think it; but it too reflects everyday reality. Moreover, it is not just the little day-trader who characterises today's "market". The whole community - the bankers, the hedge-fund managers, the ordinary Joe and Josephine in the street – swings the levers of the global poker machines now, not so much in expectation of becoming rich as in hope of grabbing at financial survival.

Everyone has been caught up in the addiction to gambling on the stock markets, foreign exchange and commodity markets – wherever a prospect exists of making or saving a fast buck.

It is not possible to construct a real economic and financial recovery while this casino philosophy and practice continue to rule.

But its reform – or more accurately its replacement - will not be easy to achieve and cannot be done quickly.