As the western economy implodes, a way out?

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This video is interesting in a week when the Atlantic western economies of US and EU seem to be imploding. It at least looks critically at the appalling absurdities of our money-banking system, suggesting solutions.

We have been told since the collapse of communism, that capitalism works because 'self-interest' - or greed - is 'human nature' and so capitalism, unlike socialism, works in harmony with that nature. This is bunkum - people's motivations are complex and they are hardly only selfish, never mind based mainly on greed, although in a societythat worships greed, you would expect greed to be an important motivator.

Communist economics was based on ideology - socialism, marxism etc - and terror. It failed because all power was monopolised by a small group of unaccountable leaders, while most people could not influence the decision of planners. Democratic planning is a different thing entirely from Stalinist or Maoist communism. It should be a far more rational system than our current model of dysfunctional capitalism.

Currently our leaders are offering austerity and privatisation as a way of 'solving' the debt crisis. It's as if no-one remembers the 1930s, when western leaders attempted to balance budgets by slashing spending, and maintaining the defunct gold standard (read Euro?). Britain's recovery began when we left the Gold Standard in 1931. But it was still a decade of austerity with government house building programmes providing some relief. In America and Germany the situation was far worse. Today, the Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on a way out of their debt crisis. In Europe austerity is the choice, despite it clearly not working in countries like Greece and Ireland.