Their mythology starts with the false premise that these are irreplaceable geniuses,” says Cuomo.

Last week, after many many years, I flew BA first class. Before you ask where I got the dough, I will tell you that I used up JP Morgan paid miles that I had been forced to hoard for years because BA never had seats. I bet on the economy returning to normal, or the rats cutting flights, and opted to use up all the miles at once before they expired or became again unuseable.

Tip: this is the time to use those miles because you will get the seats and dates you wnat.

On the way to Europe I fell into a chat with a Sindhi businessman who was going back to whichever out of the way place he made his living. He was delighted to be back in the saddle (first class) from which he had been excluded for the last many years because the banker bums were hogging the seats and paying prices that no one using their own money would ever pay. Look around, he told me contentedly, 70% of the people in first are Sindhi's. We all spend our own money and its cash so we have a budget: when we can, we go first; for a while we were afraid the bankers would so raise the prices of business that we would be in cattle for the rest of our lives.

While in Europe I met with numbers of mid sized business owners, with many friends and even cab drivers.

There is a reason that most Europeans do not want to boost demand. They think the Americans eat too much of the world already and do not want to help that balance (sic) return. Their politicians do not want to repeat Iraq, and not with money, which counts for everyone and not just a few soldiers. So, resist they will.

The American public is just as fed up with greedy bankers continuing to be paid tons. Frankly, I am with them. I was one, I know exactly how much I was worth and how much I was paid, and I know many of the senior ones getting paid even bigger buckets, and I know precisely how much they are worth. This last is a calculation anyone can do as it does not involve too many zeros.

While I sat with my suppliers in Europe we spoke only briefly about the current crisis. It is bad for business and we will all have to do what we can to survive in the short term. Most of the meeting was about what we were all going to have to do to boost labour productivity and cut the cost of capital by making things cheaper. Even the smallest company had a detailed two year product plan; the biggest had five or more years blocked out.

Nowhere did the US fit in any marketing or product (as opposed to sales) plan for any of these companies because they found it too hard to build for a mentality that may sell the company tomorrow, or where decisions are made on a personal level, or where the mix of machines is so vast in time (30 year old working alongside this year's model) that no one can actually measure productivity.

The flight back was instructive. Only three seats were taken in 1st class so the recession remains with us; the stewardess giggled a bit when I said that I really ought to check out business before I was forced to head there in time. Ha ha - we are off on vacation in two weeks. One friend who is on the same flight, but whose husband works in a normal job said we would be on the same flight but that she was in coolie. Well darling, quoth I, so are we. Later the same week, the wife of an Investment Banker informed me that she simply could not abide travelling coolie.

To complete my joy, a Master of the Universe was sitting behind me. We had a bit of a chat before take off where he promptly attacked India's profligacy in writing off farmers' loans. It was not the amount that mattered, but the fact that it set a precedent. He delicately skirted around the accepted economic wording.

Oh, I said, do you mean moral hazard of the sort that your government is so happily promoting amongst the banker classes?

Without a trace of embarrassment, but with a smirk, he said 'well, that had to be done'.

I fancy he did feel a bit of embarrassment when I bashed him with the bolshie line 'so, what's good for the filthy rich is not for the ragged poor'. But will he change? Will they change.

The fellow spent every hour of the flight calling his office and asking his myrmidons this or that trivial question about this or that trivial development at this or that trivial (given recent stock prices) company and then asking what they thought the effect would be on this or that country, or class of assets. In my minds eye I could see that between the calls his myrmidons were calling some other MoU's myrmidons with the same questions, so that by the end of the flight all M's and their m's would have the same groupthink.

The fellow concluded the last call that I overheard with the line: 'so we do not have to decide anything for the next hour or so'.

One hour at a time or five years at a time? You take your choice; I have taken mine - I will rot in hell before I allow people who decide one hour at a time to interfere with what I have built over years and where real people work making real things.