By Florence Gold

“From Zurich and Washington to Frankfurt, London, and Tokyo, all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men, bankers, economists, policy analysts, and government leaders are trying to put capitalism back together again.” So wrote Dr. John Sonbonmatsu, a professor of philosophy, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. And, he continued, “It would be difficult to exaggerate either the profundity of the contemporary crisis or the importance of developing a viable alternative to the existing order.”

Few critics of the current financial debacle are as honest, as frank or as courageous in confronting the shifting foundations of a world which seems to be in the process of dissolution. What is really needed? What should we be doing? Is minor, superficial tinkering, simply pretending that a little more money thrown to the banks, a little more supervision by the Feds will put us together again? Or is it necessary to admit that the hard work of real, profound change is necessary?

The end of capitalism has been predicted many times in the past century, perhaps too many times, and admittedly solutions, when tried, have been costly, varied and unsuccessful. What are our choices? The contemporary crisis is certainly one of major significance. Let us be honest, we are experiencing a depression not a recession. I refuse to engage the sophistry of calling it just another recession, one that given time, we can easily overcome.

Last September, the U.S. treasury injected “half a trillion dollars into the monetary system in its attempt to lift us out of the deep, financial well into which we had sunk. Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the Federal reserve, informed members of Congress that our financial system had come close to collapse. Prompt action by the treasury and the Fed had prevented “disaster and full scale panic.”