I remember in my callow youth as an oil worker from scotland going to live in japan as a break and different life being totally bemused and puzzled by talk of "post industrial society".Boy was i a novelty, fit to mix only with drunken american marines (no better boys on this earth as i found then and still think).My initial reaction  that the concept is b!"�$�$s  has proved to be right in spades and like all heresy becomes self evident....I'm sure the saintly doctor can pad out the quote for me. I speak I hope for many in saying he is a light to the world(no disrespect,( not that it's possible), to the buddha) though he should  go back to work in england even if it's part-time to rekindle the indignant anger at what has been and is being  done...

 Governments print dollars that represent no value, banks lend money they don't have. Looked at soberly, the money that circulates among us is mostly fictitious. The amazing thing is not that things come a cropper periodically, it's that it works so well for so long, despite all the abuse from outfits like Fannie Mae... until it stops working. The contraption hasn't seized up yet (except in Zimbabwe and the like) but the grinding noises are getting louder. Meanwhile, George Soros and his fellow bloodsuckers are soaking up the world's wealth. Should be interesting. Sorry for the Irish. Can't blame them for wanting to get a little bit out of the feeding frenzy when they had the chance. Wonder who has that $175,000 now?

 "But where there is no belief that life has transcendent purpose, that there is in effect more to life than this life itself, it is hardly surprising that people � that is to say, many people - take as their philosophy �Apres nous, le deluge.� The problem is that the deluge may not be apres nous."   

Mr. Dalrymple the agnostic reminds believers and Irish ex-believers that if they lose the tendency to control their appetites they will fall asunder. Self control has for thousands of years been a teaching of christianity and several other religions. In reminding us of the old religious doctrine the writer is performing a moral service similar to what the agnostic writer and philosopher Albert Camus did for French society in the post-WW2 years, when he asked vengeance-seeking mobs who turned on collaborators and fratenisers after the liberation from German rule in 1944 to examine their own levels of silent acquiesence in the humiliation of occupation. Some theologians organised conferences on the moral themes in the writings of Camus; although the writer was to thank them for their earnest attention to his oeuvre while distancing himself from their supernatural beliefs.

Bankers and politicians in recent decades created a climate of temptation for which millions of money-spending citizens fell. Live now and pay later supplanted the Victorian and pre-Victorian value of postponing  gratification and avoiding indulgence in unearned and limitless pleasure. Keynsian deficit spending aided by government printing of money was the first step in undermining the Weberian protestant ethic of hard work, thrift and dedication to family. The sexual revolution of the 1960s tuned up bodily appetites which consumerist economics catered to with devestation.

Once again, I am quite thrilled by the honest comments and discussions posed by Mr. Dalrymple. It is a delight, in this age of pretension to meet an author so uniquely capable of honest analysis and thoughtful journalism.*

It is a pleasure to be corrected by intelligent contemplatives such as the good Mr. Dalrymple.

*(However, I might add , that your statement that you are not religious, I find highly suspect, since such honesty and clarity surely befits only a man who respects God above.)

It is hard to take seriously someone who suggests the superiority of a belief system when he himself does not believe in that very belief system.

Therefore, Dalrymple never really gets out of the realm of jeremaid.

"It is hard to take seriously someone who suggests the superiority of a belief system when he himself does not believe in that very belief system."

You're confusing actual adherence to a belief system with mere admiration of its consequences.  For example, I'm not an observant Jew, but the social effects of certain strains of Judaism are to my mind far preferable to the social effects of our contemporary materialistic libertinism.  One can admire a thing without devoting one's life to it. 

"Therefore, Dalrymple never really gets out of the realm of jeremaid."

Ah, but what delightful Jeremiads they are... 

      Interesting article, as always, but Dr Dalrymple misses one culprit: the Governments whose duty is to regulate the banks, as history has shown that they are prone to act irresponsibly. When this is done passably well, the worst is avoided as has been the case not only in Canada but in Australia - none of our big "four pillars" banks looked remotely endangered at any stage.