SMU Adjunct Professor Joergen Oerstroem Moeller wrote about how the inability to reduce the debt mountain and sort out the economic mess threatens the very survival of our societies, listing examples such as the US, UK, Nordic countries and South Europe.  Even around the world, inequitable burden sharing threatens not only an economic recovery, but indeed social coherence and political stability. Tensions are building up among the majority of people with low incomes who are being asked to finance a rebalancing of the economy made indispensable by reckless behaviour of the well-off. Even worse: Those who started all this - the well-offs and the financial sector - exempt themselves from the fiscal and financial burden. Professor Moeller was of the opinion that inequality, debt, dysfunctional political systems, preserved privileges - and all without solidarity - were far too reminiscent of pre-1789 for comfort.