The bad news is still occupying newspaper headlines and is the main topic of television commentaries.

Confidence indices are at their lowest levels. Surprising? I am not surprised at all. Sooner or later the "bubble" had to burst. But what is most worrying is not the crisis itself, but that the real problem is not being addressed. Financial analyses are full of phrases such as "We must help troubled financial institutions" and "We must resuscitate economies by lowering interest rates".

But have you heard anyone saying: "Maybe it's time we start deploying lean principles at all levels of the economy?" or: "If we just had cut waste in industry and public affairs by only five per cent a year for the past 10 years there would be no crisis now?"

Have you heard anyone saying: "We have completely forgotten what generating real value and creating real wealth means - maybe, it's time to start simplifying complexity, remembering that our primary target is to produce value and wealth, real wealth, not fake wealth - so, let's roll up our sleeves, and let's start, finally, to 'work'?"

Let's make a few considerations about work, value and wealth, with a simple experiment. Ask some people you know in industry, commerce, or in the public sector, this simple question: "When on your way to work, do you think about what you are going to do to produce value and generate wealth?" The answer will generally be: "Value? What value? What wealth? I am a machine operator (a welder, a mason, a supervisor, a store employee, a truck driver, a teller, a project manager...) - all I have to do is to operate the machine by pushing a button (I weld, I lay bricks or stone, I supervise my team.) My job has got nothing to do with value or wealth - that's the job of the financial manager (the managing director, the banks, the government.) Most people do not correlate working with creating value and wealth. But that's exactly what work is supposed to produce, isn't it? Something has gone very wrong in industry, if this basic concept is not well diffused at all levels, worldwide.

One must also consider the relationship between waste and wealth. Waste does not contribute to real wealth, does it? How much waste is there in the entire world? When I talk of waste, I refer to wasted manpower, materials, energy, plant and machinery, resources and time. If lean gurus are right, waste amounts to about 50 per cent of overall economic worth. In fact, it could be even more than that. Surely more than all the billions of dollars "burnt" in stock markets since the beginning of the "crisis". How would the situation be today if, we would have cut that waste on a regular basis - say at a conservative rate of five per cent per year for the past 10 years? We would be infinitely "wealthier".

Let's also consider real wealth and fake wealth. I am referring not only to the fake, financial wealth that has made the bubble burst. I am referring to any human, commercial, governmental and organisational activity that does not produce real wealth. Building and then running a factory that produces canned tomatoes or energy-saving bulbs should indeed generate real wealth.

Building a road that contributes to make traffic flow better should contribute to generate wealth (time saved commuting). But does building a bridge and not completing it contribute to produce wealth? Or what about enforcing a "toll-gate" road-fee collection system that costs a fortune to build - and disrupts the flow of traffic: does that create real wealth?

In a nutshell, we have two major problems: neglecting or totally ignoring the impact of waste on any attempt to generate wealth, and believing that wealth is being created, while only creating fake wealth. These two problems are strictly interlinked and present a common denominator: an inadequate type of thinking. Something has gone wrong during the last century of industrialisation. We have somehow lost two core concepts: the concept of value and the concept of real wealth, with the net conclusion that our very basic existential principles have been deviated.

So, now we wonder what is causing this financial crisis. It is simple: we have forgotten basic, core values and principles. The principles practiced by honest mid-20th century craftsmen in their workshop while "working", generating wealth, and being satisfied with their efforts - replaced by principles of mass production, mass thinking, mass financing, mass building and mass polluting. I believe that if we practice "lean" a bit more intensive second Industrial Revolution principles on a world-wide basis, we won't have to worry about this kind of crisis happening again. Simply, there won't be any space for them.

Mr Scodanibbio will present a three-day workshop on July 6, 8 and 10 entitled The Lean Enterprise in collaboration with the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry. For more information send an e-mail to Jeanelle Catania on jeanelle.catania@maltachamber.org.mt or call 2123 3873 or visit www.scodanibbio.com.