It's undeniable that people are worried about what's happening in America. It's equally undeniable that it's hard for people to make any sense out of it.
The general response will always be, and understandably, what does this mean for me?
One correspondent in the Los Angeles Times most probably got it right when he said, "I think both the doom and gloom and the optimism have been oversold." Another report out of America said it's the essential paradox of prudent preparedness that the more alarmed you are about what might happen, the less likely it is to happen. Of course, through all of this are some simple and unchallengeable facts.
For years now we've asked government to do everything. In the most conspicuous proof of this, we ask government to find the money so that everyone can have free health care.
We couldn't wait to get to the polls in 1972, 36 years ago, round about when all this began, to vote for Gough Whitlam who said he'd provide free university education.
Today those promises have proved laughable, just as government in America was quite happy to encourage fringe banking interests to almost give money away to buy homes to people who couldn't survive if the wind blew in a different direction. Now the sub-prime crisis has become a prime catastrophe.
But like most things, the issues are relatively simple, the solutions harder.
Against all of that there was some very old-fashioned talk, at least on my open line yesterday, about this issue of paid parental leave. Which put simply means: Have children but someone else will pay.
And then when they get older, put them in child care and someone else will pay. And then when they get sick, put them in hospital, someone else will pay. And if they want to go to tertiary education, someone else will pay.
Which led people to say yesterday, one letter writer, "Why should taxpayers pay for other people's wants and desires?"
This writer said, "There's no incentive in this country to work, save and be honest. You just end up paying for everyone else to have a life of wants and desires without taking any responsibility for their lifestyle".
Well, this is at the crux of it.
Put simply, if a bloke wants to drink ten beers every day and eat six pies and do no exercise and falls over with a heart attack in the gutter, does someone else pick up his health bill? Multiply that by billions and this is the crisis we're in.
Tony Abbott has one of the best minds in the Federal Parliament. He'll most probably get bashed up for what he said yesterday about maternity leave.
Now in the first instance remember one thing. As welfare payments to families have increased so has the incidence of child abuse and neglect. So welfare payments don't seem to have had much beneficial impact on dysfunctional families.
Indeed, it could be said that where children are abused and neglected, they come from families which already are trapped in welfare dependency. But Tony Abbott yesterday attacked the scheme by the Productivity Commission because he said it gave stay at home mums less taxpayer support than those who worked.
Surely that's a fair point.
He talked about creating first and second class mothers. Or put another way, stay at home mums get the baby bonus, working mums under the maternity leave scheme get more than that.
Mr Abbott was saying that Government shouldn't be distinguishing between these mothers.
The debate is worth having. But at heart it's a simple debate.
Do we have to lower the boom on expectations?
Do we have to stop cultivating the notion that there's always someone else there to do the job for us, to pay our way.
The day comes when the bill is too great, and that day is here.
But it will be interesting to see whether governments continue to promise to pay for everything in order to win votes.
If those days are over, then the so-called financial crisis will not have been wasted.
