THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Sunday Observer seems to think that the very, very wealthy are beginning to feel pangs of conscience about their great wealth, but not about the way they get it. Nor, with the exception of Buffett and Gates, do they seem about to give back any of it.

And as the financial crisis spawned in the US spreads globally, there is even unprecedented talk of 'shame' in the ranks of the super-rich. 'There is something really obscene going on. This is an era of ridiculous excess. We have not seen the worst of it and there is going to be real anger,' said David Rothkopf, author of a new book, Superclass

The man with history's biggest annual pay packet is hedge fund manager John Paulson of Paulson & Company. But he is not alone, as the 'Alpha 25 list' of the super-rich published by Alpha financial magazine last week made clear. Up with Paulson were global markets gambler George Soros and rival dealer James Simons, who made $3bn apiece. Meanwhile ordinary Americans are being squeezed harder by inflation and the credit crunch, a stagnant economy, falling house values and rising unemployment - and, in a tax system rigged against them by successive conservative administrations, often pay proportionately twice as much tax as Paulson, Soros and their cohorts.

The widening gap that these trends are producing in US society is shaking traditional values to their roots. There are growing signs that the majority are losing faith in the remains of the American dream, while the chief beneficiaries of it feel guilty as never before. 'It's unprecedented that the superwealthy would express so much shame in public', said Robert Frank, author of the book Richistan, which chronicles the rise of America's new super-wealthy to a point where they live in a separate world of rarefied exclusivity. 'It is not just people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett standing up and saying "it's not fair". I spoke to 100 people earning over $10m who would not even admit to being rich: they feel ashamed about the inequality.'

Feelings are nice, might even make a hit song, but it don't mean shit to a tree if they don't put their feelings into actions. Until they do, I can only wish them all the misery in the world.