No leader in the world yet has a clear idea of how to effectively deal with the financial crisis afflicting his or her country let alone the whole world.

As the grim realities of the fallout hit home, most leaders seem adrift in a leaky craft in an ocean of debt clueless about what direction to take-what with broken oars, tattered sails and a cargo of utterly helpless ship hands and passengers in the raging financial storm that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

Almost every response so far has seemed knee jerk and has shown little promise of going anywhere. In fact the very first major action by the outgoing George Bush administration in the United States-the first mega financial package to bail out the beleaguered banks-has gone to seed with much of the taxpayers' money having disappeared into a huge black hole no one is able to tell where.

There has been strong suspicion that much of that money has gone into the banks' own cover up operations and most shamelessly towards paying out bonus compensation to senior staff on the eve of their sackings. The very men who propelled the financial world down the tube into the hellhole it finds itself in.

The money of course came from the hapless taxpayers on the street (quite literally) now faced by job losses, the loss of their homes and fast disappearing means to "put the food on the family," as George Bush once gaffed when the crisis had begun to emerge in the dying days of his second tenure.

Band-aid measures: Further propping up the banks and recapitalising them with taxpayers' money, tightening control on lending with far more stringent norms, giving bigger roles for central governments to intervene in the financial sector-the very bastion of free enterprise that shunned any form of governmental or regulatory control for all these years.

All these possible strategies are being discussed and debated across the world, but as things stand and the deepest, broadest and perhaps one of the longest credit crisis in memory rolls on like an unstoppable juggernaut, they all seem flimsy and temporary band-aid measures.

Whether one likes it or not, the buck has to stop with national governments and whether they have the intellectual and financial capacity to deal with the crisis or not, deal with it they must.

In a bid to save millions of jobs, governments have been driven to bail out private business-the trend having been set by the huge bail out package for the United States auto industry. The bailout is meant to keep jobs so that the big three car companies of that country can keep producing vehicles.

Sign of the times: But credit having dried up at all levels and runaway job losses driving ordinary people to a life of austerity, who would buy all those cars?

As it is, the world car industry is faced with a huge inventory of unsold fleets with many of the car manufacturers having shut down their factories.

Perhaps the biggest sign of the times is that Toyota, now the world's largest car maker, posted a loss for the first time in its illustrious seventy year history.

So is it a good idea to prop up industry and business to save jobs? It may not be-for several reasons.

When news reports said last month that New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was toying with the idea of possibly bailing out iconic Kiwi whiteware maker Fisher and Paykel, the media was filled with angry reactions from ordinary people.

This put the Key government into damage control mode with Finance Minister Bill English saying there was no such plan.

Why were Kiwis angry at the proposal? The company may be iconic, they said. But it was no longer purely Kiwi. When the going was good, it had thought nothing of moving its production facilities to Asia and Mexico to maximise profits with cheap labour in those countries at a tremendous cost of jobs to Kiwis.

It was a truly global company, they argued, and didn't deserve to be propped up because the benefit to local Kiwis wasn't really there. Would the governments of Mexico and the Asian countries where they had moved their factories to prop them up, they asked. Fair question.

Clearly, the financially astute Key didn't quite see the political fallout this move would have caused when he mooted the idea. Nevertheless, his administration was quick to retreat.

As this issue went to press, came the news that Samoa's Deputy Prime Minister Misa Telefoni Retzlaff made an announcement that the government had plans to offer financial aid to laid-off employees of the country's largest single private sector employer, Yazaki Samoa. At its peak, it had a workforce of 2000; it now has just over 600.

The package is understood to be designed to help laid-off employees meet their financial obligations-and the request is reported to have come from the company.

This is certainly a far better strategy than any plan to prop up the company which is sure to see tougher times in the coming months with the automotive industry in its main market, Australia, in a tailspin much as elsewhere in the world.

Mega mess: It is a strategy that directly benefits the people, helping them meet their financial obligations while waiting for the world to ride out the mega mess.

In fact governments need to first consider schemes that will keep people employed in projects that will bring benefits to the economy in the medium to long-term. One obvious avenue for such investment is infrastructure schemes that one of the government after another has announced over the past month.

Like the United States, New Zealand has announced it will set aside funds to build new roads, schools and infrastructure and fast-track planned projects to keep people in employment and the dollar in circulation.

Spending on public works is a far more practical strategy that not only employs people but also prepares and equips the economies of countries for better times when they come.

It is far better than propping up an already riddled financial system that has all along shunned any form of authority and regulation and has been driven solely by appalling self delusion wrought by unbridled greed.

There are those who believe the deeply flawed system must be allowed to fail and go to seed after which natural forces in the economy will rebuild a new system, hopefully without the pitfalls and weaknesses of the existing one.

Persisting in propping up the present system is like continuing to throw good money after bad-it can't do anybody any good.