Sam Mendes' 2008 film 'Revolutionary Road' is edited to maximise heartbreak among viewers. Its opening scene shows bright young things Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) falling for each other at a New York party. Without missing a beat it then cuts to April displaying a mediocre performance in a mediocre amateur drama, which Frank is only too willing to point out. By this stage they are already married, with children and a brooding mutual resentment. Whatever happened, we are urged by this brutal jump cut to ask, to love's young dream? The disenchantment foisted upon us by the slow death of honest, free market capitalism, and of any form of political integrity, has, by contrast, taken its time coming. But that disintegration and its accompanying, lingering sense of existential despair are just as sure. There has been profound change in the markets over the last decade alone, and none of it good.

Crisis historians can take their pick deciding precisely when the rot set in. Our suggestion would be President Nixon's 1971 abandonment of the dollar to an unbacked, purely fiat status. That, in turn, allowed all other currencies to start out on the road to hell together. Other candidates include the 'Greenspan put' variously displayed after the 1987 Crash, during the 1998 bail-out of Long Term Capital Management, before the year 2000's 'Millennium Bug' (sic), and after the dotcom bust (ahead of, and igniting, the US property boom that proved both pièce de résistance and coup de grâce). But whatever the proximate cause of the death of free market capitalism, by the time that Lehman Brothers failed (six months after the emergency bail-out of Bear Stearns) the patient had already entered a climactic decline, and now suffers fitfully under life support.

David Fuller's view Personally, I am less interested in writing about what has gone wrong with the monetary and political system during my lifetime. It is not good for my blood pressure; it bores the family and it would be delusional of me to think that I can influence, let alone change these global events.

Instead, I am much more interested in finding a financial path through what can sometimes feel like a minefield. Usually, it is better than that, in which case the risk may be overconfidence rather than a paucity of opportunities.