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The scene is set for worldwide demonstration that the political and financial systems have led us to the brink of a serious recession. There can really no longer be any doubt that our current models of both capitalism and democracy – especially when combined – have failed.

They have been failing for many years but, like the drowning man swimming further out to sea, we have not heeded the signs or attempted to head back to the shores of prudence. Indeed, some politicians have actually quoted prudence as their goal at the very moment they were moving further away from it.

The disgrace is not exclusively down to leadership, though leaders must accept responsibility for raising expectations too high and persistently passing on the ensuing mess to their successors. “Buggins turn” has become a cause for fear rather than for rejoicing. Sooner or later we were bound to reach the last turn. So who now cannot find a chair when the music stops?

At present Greece is the fall guy. The demands of lenders are just too much for the population to bear. The level of strikes will soon amount to anarchy, unless someone prints a lot more money and pushes the problem a few weeks down the road. But even the man in the street is beginning to understand that printing money is folly, and not just in the long term. We have been adequately warned of the domino effect. Soon we shall see it happening.

Leaders should have known it was folly a long time ago. Chancellor George Osborne in UK has just said he is willing to print more but the US Fed is beginning to see that if it does it merely exacerbates the problem, almost immediately. Stop gap solutions without a sound strategy will no longer work.

The basis for that strategy must be the restoration of confidence in the world’s fundamental systems. This will only be achieved if we teach sensible living as part of our much trumpeted universal education. I see no item on the current curricula that resembles this. How can we modify material expectations? Not by exhortation to ‘do the right thing’. People don’t respond to sermons any more.

The renaissance of decent living has to take account of five factors.

First, the disparity of incomes and wealth must be seen by the majority not just as grossly unfair but as unsustainable in the global village in which we live.

Second, debt must become acceptable only in dire personal emergencies. All borrowing other than that charitably provided must be expensive enough for those who have saved to earn a reasonable return on their savings.

Third, rewards beyond the daily basic wage must be related to longer term success than this month’s results. Deferred pleasure will only come about when the wherewithal to get it is also deferred.

Fourth, the political circus must be redesigned to a more sensible way of electing those who supposedly govern us. While the stage remains a music hall it will be largely peopled by clowns.

Fifth, education must be about education, not about passing exams. No wonder the world is in a mess when the young are denied their childhood in order to sport certificates that prove nothing at all about their being educated.

What follows ‘twist’? In song, ‘shout’. In poker, ‘bust’.

The song is sung. The game is nearly over.