Capitalism
   Real capitalism has ceased to exist in the world's most advanced economies. This is a very bold statement but true nonetheless. In 2008 national governments around the world decided that the largest financial institutions, including banks, were 'too big to fail' and bailed them out with public money. One of the most important concepts behind capitalism is that badly run and failing businesses are allowed to go bankrupt and be replaced with new, better run ones. This didn't happen in 2008. The desperate banks were instead saved by taxpayers money.
   For capitalism to exist there must be capital - large pools of money used for investment. The global economy is, in fact, existing on debt. It has also reached the point where the largest businesses act as monopolies or cartels with fraud being tolerated by the authorities and fines imposed by governments becoming part of the business models of corporations. Fines for illegal behaviour have just become one of the expenses of doing business.
   To really understand how this situation came into being and continues to operate we must first understand what money really is and how it is created.

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Consumer Based Economies
   All of the developed economies of the world are based upon consumption. People have to buy products or use services continually or the system will collapse. There is one critical flaw in this system and that is we all live on a planet that has finite resources. That the world does not contain enough materials to support endless growth would seem obvious to most of us. But, the current system has been designed with the assumption that economies can continue to grow for ever. All nations economies and indeed the world economy must grow by at least a few percent each year to remain in a healthy state. A few percent seems quite reasonable at first glance but to a mathematician who understands how exponential growth works this amount of growth results in huge increases in the numbers even after a relatively modest amount of time.