The Humpty Dumpty of capitalism is broken and none of King Brown s horses or men has the faintest clue of how to put it back together again...

The Humpty Dumpty of capitalism is broken and none of King Brown's horses or men has the faintest clue of how to put it back together again.

We face a very dark financial cloud. Many people will lose their jobs and homelessness is set to soar.

It didn't help matters when King Brown sold off our gold reserves - hence our pound now being at an all-time low.

A low pound used to be good news for exporters - but even at a good price, few countries can now afford to import - but we must import - and pay higher prices to do so. Rationing looks set to return.

The last time we had rationing it was because of the Nazi blockade. Now the world is at economic (more than military) war, for credit - the oxygen of big and small business alike - is drying up. Without credit, big business, in particular, is stymied.

So this very dark cloud could have a silver lining. Already the government has had to (quietly) announce that two new aircraft carriers will not be built. Perhaps Trident renewal will have to be halted. As French and German governments feel the pinch, perhaps no more nuclear power stations will be built. We can only pray that these and so many other madnesses costing vast amounts of money will not go ahead.

King Brown's new boss, Emperor Obama, let us hope, will have to soon announce that Bush's promise to build 500 more nuclear power stations in the USA will have to be broken. Not only this, the (selective) "war on terror" takes rather a lot of money - several billion dollars monthly - not so easy to find now that every nation in the world is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Our survivors in hundreds of years - if there are any - will look back with amazement, I trust, at a world where the USA alone had enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world several times over, while the majority of people in the world lacked the basic necessities of life.

They will marvel at a Britain in the early 21st century where every winter tens of thousands of elderly people died from the cold, even before Humpty Dumpty fell.

Harry G. Moss,

Manor Road, Stoke Newington.