The paradox of the current financial crisis is that the incompetent and corrupt are bailed out by the government so they can continue to take greater and greater risks, this time subsidised from the public purse. The governments themselves are highly indebted; Britain is on the brink of defaulting on its national debt, the first time since the Middle Ages. The US is already technically bankrupt having more debt obligations than the Weimar Republic. These governments have had to print money into circulation as no one wants to take on the toxic assets of the banks via government debt. As a result hyperinflation in the US is a certainty in the next 1-10 years, elsewhere high inflation will make your savings and your pension effectively worthless. The important thing to understand is that the financial crisis has not been resolved. Governments have just re-leveraged the toxic assets of the banks; if the financial problems we saw in 2007/08 were to repeat there would not be sufficient funds to prevent a collapse of the financial system. Rather than government fixing the problem, they have just made the situation much worse.