There is one school of thought, call it black humour, if you wish, that the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States did not make much of a difference to African-Americans initially. It simply meant that many whites reached the low standard that the blacks were living at in the first place.

There is no joking about the current financial crisis and if the pundits are right, then the fallout in the United States, parts of Europe and now Asia is going to hit Jamaica, if not with a vengeance, then certainly with a significant impact, although there is still room for optimism. If and when it does, the best efforts of Prime Minister Golding's team will not be able to save us.

The group of business people who attended Thursday's Editors' Forum could not be more sober in their analyses and warnings. "Be prudent with your money, especially your disposable income; adjust your lifestyle; eliminate the things you can do without; batten down as you would for a hurricane; worse is yet to come; look carefully and weigh your options."

No options for those hardest hit

The trouble is, financial crises always hit hardest those who are least able to buffer the effects and, for some Jamaicans, the sage advice given by the analysts will not be applicable, for they have little or no options. It is the domestic workers who will lose their jobs as their employers (who are employees themselves) feel the pinch; it is the mass of unemployed men, who have nothing to offer to the job market but their brawn, who will rove from site to site without finding a job; it is those who are being supported largely by remittances who will find that they are going to collect less frequently and lower amounts, than usual, each time.

It is they, who are potentially the critical mass, who could make a riot out of a recession, so it is they who, in case this economic fallout really does hit, to whom it must be explained that the situation is really beyond the control of those to whom they would normally look for some measure of protection.

However, telling those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder that things are hard is one thing. Showing them is quite another. So, if we do fall into a downward economic spiral, it would be best for those in charge to resist obvious excesses. In other words (and this is by no means an earth-shattering or new notion), advising one set of people to cut back, while there is obvious splurging and conspicuous consumption among those who are mandating belt-tightening is a no no.

We are not, of course, advocating symbolic cosmetic changes, as have happened in the past, simply an awareness that the perception of inequality breeds discontent more than inequality itself.

We cannot, as a nation, tell those who will be affected most, by an economic downturn, about 'markets' while not showing that we understand ourselves.

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