Austerity has become the operating system of the Western world. As we move from credit crunch to spending crunch, every day brings us a new move to reduce government debt and keep corporations afloat, and every day it becomes clearer that ordinary citizens are paying the price.
One answer is that the levers of power are still being handled on the grand scale, as we saw with Wednesday's announcement of concerted action by the central banks of five nations and the European Central Bank to prop up the world's financial system.
This is the grand bargain of trickle-down economics: that by giving 'the markets' (as personified by fund managers and ratings agencies) what they want now, we'll all have a future that's happier, healthier and wealthier. The problem with the trickle-down bargain is that by the time it delivers, most of us will be dead.
If you are young and unemployed that bargain of jam tomorrow doesn't look so attractive, unless you're one of the lucky few on the jam-today side of the wire.
Across Europe more than a fifth of young people are out of work and it's not getting any better. Pension rights, welfare benefits and employment rights are all being chipped away on the grounds that they're unaffordable. This is another way of saying that bailouts are a one way street: those with resources don't think they should be asked to share them with those without.
The problem is that it all seems too big and impersonal to change, and because we're mostly hooked into the bargain through mortgages or pensions or employment contracts, we don't feel we can rock the boat. Best just to trust the masters of the universe to get it right for once.
It doesn't have to be like this. There's a growing readiness to think about different ways of organising society that share the benefits more equally and allow citizens to take more control over their lives. Most of these ideas are small and local, from community ownership of assets to participatory budgeting and alternative currencies. But do enough of them in enough places and you have the beginnings of real change.
This 'massive small' approach can revitalise civil society, enliven our towns and cities, create new forms of collaboration and deliver local economic benefits. But there's still a disconnect between this energised, networked and distributed social action and the behaviour of international political and financial institutions.
This week I was at the European Parliament to see how some are starting to bridge that gap. The European Congress for Alternatives was an opportunity for voluntary organisations and campaigning groups to see how local action could be networked at an international level.
Anna Coote from the new economics foundation talked about coproduction - a partnership between service providers, users, their families and neighbours - as a way of transforming public services. Rafaella Bolini from the Italian network ARCI spoke of how her organisation had networked 5,000 grassroots groups with more than one million members. Klaus Sambor spoke of the campaign for a minimum basic income, arguing that it could change welfare 'from a compensatory to an emancipatory system', providing citizens with a choice about how they participate in society.
As Niccolo Milanese, one of the organisers, put it: 'The role of civil society is to make proposals for alternatives, and we have to fight for the space to make these proposals clearly.'
The coming year presents both a threat and an opportunity at a European level. The threat is immediate: that in the wake of the financial crisis, member states will renegotiate the Lisbon treaty in ways that weaken its already weak social clauses and lock ordinary citizens into decades of falling living standards.
The opportunity is trickier, but real: the European Citizens' Initiative, which comes into effect in April, enables citizens to band together to call for changes at a European level. Any proposal that can garner one million supporters from at least a quarter of EU member states must be considered.
That sounds difficult, but in a networked world it shouldn't be. The secret will be to keep proposals simple, well argued, non-partisan and in tune with the rising tide of popular concern for justice and equality. Organisations that are already well networked will play an important part here, and it's essential that they do so openly and collaboratively.
Of course any proposal for change may be frustrated by obfuscation and filibustering within the belly of the European monster. There will inevitably be opposition. But the opportunity is not just to change European legislation, but to create networks of European citizens who can become a catalyst for democracy, locally and internationally, in an increasingly undemocratic and unequal world.