Mr. Obama, perhaps you are not old enough -

Mr. Obama, perhaps you are not old enough to know about personal responsibility.

About forty years ago a young man of twenty-one or so, but older in the practical intelligence that most of us then had, told me as follows:

'I have taken over the car-radiator business from my boss, who has retired. Someone will come to me and say, "Look, my radiator is leaking, what do I do?" So I look at it and, if it is not repairable by other means, I say. "You need a new radiator, and for this model today that will cost you $50."

All too frequently he will say, "But I only have $25, and I have to have the car to go to work."

So then I tell him, "Yes, and I sympathize.  But I have to tell you this: if I let you have the radiator for $25 and a promise, then the problem becomes mine.  You no longer have a problem, but I do.  So, if you bring me $50 dollars I will fit your radiator that you need, but finding the $50 is your problem, and solving your problem has to be your responsibility, not mine.  Now surely you can see that?"  And they always see the sense of it, and go off to try to resolve their problem, which they almost always do.'

Mr. Obama, whether by design and under orders, or whether by simple nefarious cupidity, the banking and general finance industry has just got itself and us into a serious financial jam and, though adults, via you they are asking US, the blameless but carefully stupefied public all over the world, to relieve them of their problem and pay for it.  And what is more, for reasons that are becoming apparent, you and 'our leaders' all over the world are appeasing them and giving them what they say they need, even though we, and surely you, see them misspending the money in further strategic acquisitions and greedy bonuses.

Yes, we, the public all over the world, can see what they are doing, and can see the shifty expressions of the prime-movers in these financial shenanegans, who - though doubtless under orders - know that what they are doing is just yet another monstrous heist.

Surely now, Mr. Obama, are you going to let them use your office to get away with yet another swindle, or are you - without going into the niceties of legalese and expediency by which the villains of the piece want you to evade your responsibility - going to patiently explain to them the onus of personal responsibility as the good sense of yesteryear has now explained it to you?  Are you or are you not going to make them and their manipulators face their own responsibilities for the mess that they have deliberately caused?

That was a question, Mr. Obama.  Your answer is . . . ?