Rob's got an excellent and provocative post on the state of the world. Here's his opening:

I find what is going on with our financial system right now a bit like watching a parent die of a terminal illness. We all lie to each other until it is too late to speak the truth or to ask the right questions.

If we will never go back to a binge society, what will we all do? Our whole society has been based on the binge - only a tiny fraction of us worked on real things. Those that did grow food, look after children, know how to make real things - did poorly. The rest of us who were employed on unreal things did better.