their ability to efficiently manage the economic base of our society as individuals able to shape their own history. The quasi paralysis of our credit systems in the last several months represents a flagrant expression of that collapse of spirit. Due to deep doubts about the worth of securities and bonds held by our most powerful financial institutions and resulting feelings of uncertainty, many investors, bankers, stockbrokers, and other financial actors have not only refused to speculate in both domestic and international financial markets but allowed themselves to become the agents of a frozen process that actually impedes an adequate flow of credit and money in the economy. Among the consequences of this dire state of affairs, we of course count difficulties related to businesses finding it hard to invest and grow, cuts in both production an employment, but also a sense of helplessness and despair among those very same individuals, at the top of the financial world, whose enlightenment and competence was supposed to shield society from this horrible conjecture.
Our economic leaders’ self-confidence has taken a severe hit also because they have come to the realization that not only did they fail to produce real wealth for America but also their actions may have actually triggered a generalized process impoverishment for most Americans. They have brutally awoken to the reality that much of their occupational lives have consisted in a simulated existence that confused dazzling, sophisticated computing schemes with the production of real wealth, which, something they may have never learned, must always derive from concrete work that concretely improves our society. Our financial wizards have mistaken their highly speculative and often