Making the world go round?

There are many things about which I know almost nothing. I am prepared to admit that the minds of women are closed books, American politics baffles me, but the peak of my ignorance has to lie in the world of finance.

There was a time when I knew exactly what my income was, and how much there was in the bank. It was easy to keep tabs on as there was so little money involved. Personal finance has never really been of much interest to me. Why worry about things that you cannot change? I have always had enough to eat and to pay the bills and since childhood have learned to live within my means. I hate being in debt and will avoid that whenever possible. At the moment I owe nothing to anyone and that gives me a feeling of independence and in some ways one of isolation.

I have been trying to get my head around the financial crisis that seems to have begun in the USA and as all things tend to, it is spreading like a dreadful virus throughout the world. I just do not understand what happens to all the money that people keep losing. Money cannot just disappear, so therefore, wherever there are losers there must be winners. The money of millions of people is seemingly being syphoned into the accounts of wealthy speculators who are manipulating the markets in order to feather their own nests. I guess that this is true of the capitalistic system that demands everything from those that have very little and rewards those who have most.

Most of us just have to watch while, the clever bastards in the stock exchanges wave their hands about and destroy peoples lives.
I am sure that things are much more complicated than they appear, but I do feel that the system is fundamentally corrupt and is simply the playground of the super rich who are interested merely in their own personal wellbeing.

There, i have demonstrated my ignorance and will compound it by confessing that I don't know the difference between stocks, shares, PEPs Bonds, annuities, and endowments. I do however know what a mortgage is and am so glad that I don't have one.