This leads to an important issue, the relation of the political system and the financial.
Neither the US nor the UK have effective means of changing the system.
In the US the process has overtaken any policy considerations or possibility of implementing them.
The never-ending Presidential selection system effectively reduces the choices available, so that McCain would try to minimise government whilst actually supporting the over-leant banks and throwing people out of their homes to the benefit of the rentier class, whilst Obama would create vast and inefficient systems to prop up consumption whilst still being entirely in hock to the banking and governmental systems.
In the UK change is even harder.
The labour party has enthusiastically adopted the Thatcherite system, as it gives those at the top unlimited opportunities to realise unearned income.
They are socialist only in their penchant for creating bloated bureaucracies and socialising losses, as at Northern Rock, which is pretty straightforward pork.
In any case by the time of an election in 2010 economic conditions will likely lead to it's effective disintegration in it's present form.
The Conservative party is unwavering in it's commitment to the financial institutions and procedures that got us into this mess.
Practicality has never been a criteria by which Liberal policy is set.
In both countries the financial system is the real government, and they are not about to legislate themselves out of easy money and start working.
Real change likely will arrive via a 1789 style purge, rather than through the incremental adaption of the system.