The stability of global financial markets is a public good. If governments fail to protect this public good, then those who suffer are the working people of the world whose jobs, whose homes, and whose standard of living depends on it.

The middle and working classes are paying the debt that the financial markets created.

There is a valid nationwide sentiment of concern over public pensions, and poor funding ratios are viewed negatively by financial markets.

What we have seen in financial markets should bring home to us all that the central organising principle of this 21st century is interdependence. For the century just past, interdependence may have been one option among many. For the century that is to come, there is no longer an alternative.

Remember that all financial markets are filled with good but not necessarily innocent people looking after their own self-interests before they look after yours.

The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.