I was quite serious yesterday about not playing the economic game we are stuck in the middle of. It's twice now that globalization is causing global chaos; the crash of 1929 and this one in 2008. In between there have been problems, but national controls on money and it's movement have largely limited the problems to specific countries. I'm thinking particularly of Bretton Woods ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system ) and how that helped build up the world economy at the end of World War 2.
In the end Bretton Woods failed, largely due to the increased influence of (mostly) US banks, whose currency speculation managed to force the US to abandon the link between the dollar and gold, much as happend to the pound on Black Friday. Same scheming crooks in the same scheming banks, just 20 years later.
Despite it's final demise, Bretton Woods does show what coordinated governement action can acomplish. Maybe we don't need Bretton Woods, but we do desperately need something to replace so-called investment banks gambling with pension fund money, which is basically where we are now.