The economic topic de nos jours is the imploding US property market, and by extension ours too, since our economies move in some sort of tandem working, like two planets orbiting, except they go round each other and not the Sun. Sub-prime has entered the lexicon.

I am amazed at the greed ,and really, there's no other term for it, the moral turpitude of those predatory finance companies who inveigled people on next to nothing incomes to sacrifice everything (ultimately their roofs) and take monumental mortgages on board, on payment rates, as the alleged financial adviser knows full well, can never be met. It is criminal.

A healthy and more importantly stable, bubble free property market moves any economy on; and generates a tremendous amount of equally as important collateral activity - furniture, durable goods (fridges, freezers, etc - the big ticket items). Slowdown there eventually hurts everyone.

I also surmise this is going affect the US welfare system: what happens to the thousands of foreclosed sub prime victims with no where to go, no homes, no jobs probably, unable to meet the health insurance payments. Where do they go? How are they going to survive. This has dire consequences socially.

The chutzpah...no, let me frame in starker terms, since chutzpah implies a certain charming roguishness, which certainly does not apply here; arrogance is what it is, of these manipulative, cunning, racketeering finance companies to think they have come up with a fool-proof way of generating ever expanding profits through the sleight of hand tricks of chopping up debt and selling it on like a deli counter cuts up a block of parmesan...well, it's breathtaking. Surely any commercial outfit worth it's salt would carry out risk analysis, try to 'suss out what the consequences are of launching products like this in to the wild. After all, every action carries a consequence or multiples thereon; they need to be understand. It's not happened here. How can people be so ignorant of that and the same time, so apparently contemptuous of the people they were allegedly trying to help.

Ok, I understand the notion of freedom in the capitalist world. I'm a capitalist, unashamed on that: made money on stocks (lost too), keep steadily investing, homeowner, and another property to boot and so on. I want people to be able to move on in life, better themselves through their own efforts. Owning property implies responsibility, civic and public. However, I draw a big breath when it comes to people being gulled and misled into something that will ruin them whilst a mortgage adviser disappears into the sunset with a hefty commission. Unfair, unethical; flat, plain, simple, it's wrong.

The UK immune to this? Puleeze....! The City of London is the safe haven, the bear pit, for all these messy impenetrable, smoke and mirrors financial products: derivatives, option, CDOs and so on. As enthusiastic as Wall Street....doubtless some these financial incubi were created and hatched here.

I've no cross to bear against capitalism; it's how it's delivered that makes me so indignant.

Ok, time for me to step off the bully pulpit. The keyboard has taken some pounding these past ten minutes. Nearly smoking.

The US is such a great country, easily my favourite, intellectually, creatively, I always feel recharged whenever I've been, especially NYC, which is the only place I could effectively survive in after London. But the US could be, can be even better if there's some thought and consideration given to the economy, a wider view as well that looks beyond the needs and wishes of Wall Street, and into the hard-working core of the country.