We in Europe love America and all it has stood for through most of our history, and that is why we suffered watching helplessly as your predecessor, with the support and occasional applause of his electors, trampled on almost everything that America embodied and for which we loved and respected it so deeply. Nothing hurts more than iniquity and disingenuousness in a good friend. And when the friend happens to be also a most respected authority, example, and guide, his wickedness also confuses and frightens. If we could have voted, we in Europe would have given you a landslide victory because we believe that you will restore to America the trust, moral authority, and planet-wide authority that your predecessor recklessly squandered.

I would raise with you just one problem, selected because of the danger that it may sink and drown in the flood of advice you receive from your country and the world at large. This concerns the frequently overlooked, or played down, root of the worldwide economic crisis in which, alas, America was as much culprit as victim.

The reaction to the "credit crunch" so far, impressive and even revolutionary as it may appear as it is processed in the media headlines and through politicians' sound-bites, has been an effort or promise to return to the status quo ante: an effort to recapitalize the money lenders and to make their debtors credit-worthy once more, so the business of lending and borrowing, of falling in debt and staying there, could return to "usual," and the economy be made to run again on consumers' willingness to spend money they haven't earned. It is with that purpose in mind that "the welfare state for the rich" (which unlike its namesake for the poor has never had its rationality questioned, let alone put out of operation) has been brought back to the showrooms from the service quarters to which its offices were temporarily relegated to avoid invidious comparisons.

What is joyously (and foolishly) forgotten on such occasions is that the nature of human suffering is determined by the way humans live. Indeed, the roots of the currently lamented pains, like the roots of all social evils, are sunk deep in our trained mode of life and in our carefully cultivated and by now deeply seated habit of running for consumer credit whenever there is a problem to face, or difficulty to bypass. In that human weakness, the banks spotted a chance to transform debts into permanent money-earning assets. So, breaking with the philosophy of the old-style money lenders, they moved to treat prompt repayment of credits as a liability, not an asset-unless more and larger debts were incurred for that purpose. Clients with no debts to pay interest on augur no profits. In unison with the now departing administration, banks reckoned that-like other drugs meant to provide temporary escape from troublesome realities-life on credit is addictive to all its victims: to governments and to the men and women they govern. In line with the strategy that led to the present catastrophe, the bankers and their cronies proposed the apparently easy way out of the shock that afflicted both the drug addicts and the drug pushers once the supply of drugs ran thin: resumption of the (hopefully regular) supply of drugs from other sources and by other means.

We have not started as yet to give serious thought to the sustainability of our consumption-and-credit-propelled society. "Return to normality" portends return to bad, and always potentially dangerous, ways. Intention to do so worries: it signals that neither the people who run the financial institutions, nor our governments, have reached to the roots of the trouble in their diagnoses-let alone in their deeds. Quoting Hector Sants, the head of the Finances Services Authority, who a few days ago confessed to "business models ill-equipped to survive the stress ... a fact that we regret," Simon Jenkins, a uniquely insightful analyst of The Guardian, observed, "It was like a pilot protesting that his plane was flying just fine except for the engines." But Jenkins does not lose hope: he still reckons that once the culture of "greed is good" has been "tested to destruction by the recent hysteria of city incomes," the "noneconomic components of what we vaguely refer to as the good life will take more prominence," both in our life philosophy and our governments' political strategy. Let us hope with him: we haven't yet reached the point of no return, there is still time (however short) to reflect and change the track, we may yet turn the present shock and trauma to our and our children's advantage ...

Which I wish you with all my heart, Mr. President, to succeed in doing. God bless you-and through you all the rest of us, the residents of the planet we share.

Zygmunt Bauman is emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Leeds. His latest publications are Has Ethics a Chance in the World of Consumers? (Harvard University Press 2008) and The Art of Life (Polity Press 2008).