Cameron conceded that he had a job ahead to tackle '120,000 most troubled families' in a 'social and security fightback' against what he termed the 'slow-motion moral collapse' of Britain. Former prime minister Tony Blair rushed to deny that Britain was in a state of moral decline, and tried to brush aside any connections between the looting on the streets and the high salaries of bankers. He would, wouldn't he, since it was he who, following Margaret Thatcher's damage of British industry, boosted London's role as the centre of a supposedly winning service economy.

It should be worrying that high financial salaries on both sides of the Atlantic are accompanied by a sense of entitlement with no understanding about what is going on in the rest of the economy.

Western economies, including Japan's, are in a mess and marked by slow growth, unsustainable levels of debt, an overpaid overclass, a growing underclass and a massive army of unemployed. Yet some people have never had it so good. Corporate profits in the US are at record levels of almost US$1.7 trillion. Multibillionaire Warren Buffett urged the government to stop coddling the super-rich.

The reaction among many of Buffett's peers was that if he wanted to pay more tax, the US revenue had a gift window allowing him to do so. As former investment banker William Cohan noted, while Main Street US suffers from rising unemployment, 'the financial industry is dancing a jig after paying itself about US$150 billion in compensation in 2010'.

The economic mess is compounded by head-in-the-sand politics. In the US, the Republican Party has been captured by the right wing, which wants to curb the economic powers of the White House and cut the entitlements of the underclass. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, increasingly favoured to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency next year, wants to repeal the 16th amendment to the US Constitution that gives the federal government income taxation powers.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel stubbornly rejects any initiative to help hard-pressed southern European members of the euro zone, declaring that they must reduce their debts. She conveniently forgets that Germany's rise as the world's second-biggest exporter was helped by profligate euro zone spenders.

The clear message is that without unexpected help or the rise of a politician with imagination, the social strains and the daily toil of surviving will increase the risks of an uprising by the underclass in Britain or elsewhere.

Andrew Sheng last week expressed on this page the poetical wish that, 'Today, at the height of the Western financial crisis, only China can save capitalism.' I wish that too, but fear it is wishful thinking. For all its soaring success, China accounts for less than 10 per cent of global gross domestic product, whereas the US and European Union countries together account for about half. So as the West slows down, China's export model will look increasingly fragile.

And there is no indication that the rulers in Beijing are yet interested in playing a global role or understand the implications and restrictions on domestic freedoms of such a role.

Kevin Rafferty was editor of independent daily newspapers during annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank