I know what you’re saying since in Britain we share more personal debt than any other developed nation. Yet in my view it’s far too easy to blame Gordon Brown for the depth of our current economic crisis, since it goes back much further than that — to Mrs Thatcher’s fostering of a share-owning middle class, and even back further, through the home-owning dreams of a British aspirational middle class, already identifiable even in Abigail’s Party from 1977.

We were all sucked into it — and how many of us can really claim to be such paragons of economic common sense and good virtue over these past three decades that we have never ever discussed house prices at a dinner party, at some stage or other?

The illusion of unending growth, and the lure of ‘easy money’ — these are the familiar traps and the get-rich quick schemes that catch us out in one form or other, time and time again.

For the moment, cash is king and the banks are refusing to do any business, since logically by far the best and safest trade they can possibly do is through paying the government bail-out and its 12% coupon. In rescuing the banks, we have succeeded in leaving businesses and individuals without the means to invest.

Our institutions may now be safe, but our economy is in pieces, and fragmenting further every day. The New Year now has to see some real loosening of liquidity, or I fear we’re all going to be looking through the glass very much more darkly, very soon and for a lot longer to come.

Many thanks again, Keith, and all best wishes to you for 2009.

Galbraith saw this coming

Well, today that might just be the only true quote he ever uttered.

How quick we are to denegrate our politicians, blaming them for all ills. But wither the monsters of the markets? Those pig-bellied, pin-striped dinosours sucking on cubans and swilling fine cognac as their creation writhes in what appear to be ugly death-throws? Hang stocks and shares – bring back the stockades! Stale bread, rotten fuit, mouldy hubris and deseased, over-inflated egos should be piled high and made available to the great unwashed. 11.3 billion on bonuses in ’06, 7.3 billion in ’07 . . . I wonder what Julian and Celeste can expect this Christmas? Were there any justice in the world they’d be lucky to get a pack of kindling and a cardboard des res, but of course the world don’t turn that way. No, it’s the plebs who’ll pay, through fear and loathing at first, then tax-hikes and service cuts.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from history it’s that we continue to learn nothing from history. What a corall of dumb, nose-led beasts we are. Baaaaaaaah!

As Jon Taplin elegantly shows, New York put it more bluntly last week.

These are interesting times we are living in. Interesting times.

All best wishes to you in Hamburg, from here in London.