There were billionaires a week ago who are now mere millionaires. There are hedge-fund managers left hanging by a twig. For them, no heart bleeds. Then there are the rest of us.

There were billionaires a week ago who are now mere millionaires. There are hedge-fund managers left hanging by a twig. For them, no heart bleeds. Then there are the rest of us. Those of us hardest hit by the stock market crash will lose investments, pensions. Some of us are facing a longer working life than we bargained for. Many will lose their jobs and still more are already struggling to meet mortgage repayments. Even those who played safe with their savings will be turning down or turning off the central heating this winter as house values fall. With the future looking uncertain, Christmas presents will shrink to tokens. We'll be taking the bus instead of driving the car and rediscovering the packed lunch.

The economic meltdown is bad news. And yet it brings with it a sense of returning to deeper values. We were all richer of late and somewhat nastier for it. They say that power corrupts. Now we know that greed does, too. There was something about our get-rich-quick society that was decidedly unpleasant - not to say trashy. We had reached a stage where the measure of a man or woman was the number of noughts in their bank account or the value of their home.

Someone's financial status was becoming part of their vital statistics. If you asked: "What's he like?" the answer as often as not was: "Loaded."

I once interviewed Kingsley Amis, who was setting off for lunch at his club. He was, he told me, a member of the elite: the aristocracy. He said there were two doors into it, one by birth, the other by talent. He belonged to the superior branch, the talented. During the past decade of boom all he would have needed was cash. Of late, society's pecking order put the rich above all others - never mind how they made their money.

Fat-cat bankers were treated like masters of the universe. Politics needs funding and the city had the ear of politicians. Now we see these financiers as gamblers who were using our savings as their stake. But right up to Northern Rock too many of us bought into the myth and, like Del Boy, dreamed of joining their ranks.

Money and lots of it became our predominant ambition. Those of us with only spare cash to play with bought lottery tickets and dreamed of winning £1m. Then Euro lottery came along and we upped the dream to tens of millions. Ordinary wage-earners borrowed money to invest in buy-to-let flats. Suddenly everyone was a businessman. Speculate to accumulate was the order of the day.

For the past few years many homeowners made more money from their houses than their jobs - and borrowed against the notional value to splash out on restaurants, holidays, cars and designer clothes.

And all the time we knew deep down that we were living in a fool's paradise. House prices couldn't rise forever and credit always requires repaying with knobs on. Now that the myth of limitless prosperity has ended we are waking to a colder reality. But it is reality. And instead of feeling sorry for ourselves we should remember that in world terms, we're still among the better-off. Those of us still on the survivors' side of insolvency should take the opportunity to shift our priorities back to more worthwhile concerns.

In the midst of all the notional wealth we've been enjoying and losing, there have been real casualties. The gap between rich and poor has spread social discontent and that discontent has been ruthlessly exploited.

Yesterday on Radio 4 a sub-prime mortgage salesman told how his firm deliberately targeted people who were already in debt. He was part of a 200-strong team selling unaffordable mortgages to people who were singled out because they were in financial difficulty and, therefore, vulnerable.

The sales team was motivated by daily incentives such as trips to New York or Barbados for the top seller. They earned commission and cash bonuses. The database they worked from listed people with arrears or county court judgments against them.

Into this world of dejection and worry would come a sunny telephone call offering to clear outstanding debt and package everything into a remortgage which would additionally offer the customer £10,000 in cash. To anyone financially unsophisticated, it must have seemed like a gift from the gods. What the salesman and his colleagues failed to mention was that the repayments were probably twice the purchaser's current outgoings.

The salesman earned more in commission than he did in salary. His customers, who were loaned the entire value of their property when its value was at a peak, will now face negative equity, repossession and homelessness.

But the salesman earned a pittance compared to the company directors who employed him. They will have been driving around in the sort of cars and living in the style of house we came to revere: financially prosperous and morally bankrupt. And the same companies, renamed, are continuing to make money by managing debt. An association of mortgage victims is demanding a major national investigation. I hope they get it.

Meanwhile, somewhere between the new mega rich and the exploited poor, the people who were once among the most valued in society were being marginalised. Teachers, nurses and policemen on reasonable salaries could no longer afford to buy a home in some cities. They were no longer afforded the high status they traditionally enjoyed in their communities. Academics, artists and scientists - people who work for the longer-term good of society - were also more marginalised. What you knew came second to what you had.

I know one young mental health professional who, after an excellent degree, did four years post-graduate training. The only way she can afford to live in London is to occupy a room in the hostel where she works. I also know a young banker with no post-graduate qualifications and five years her junior, who this time last month could probably have bought the hostel.

I know that money makes the world go round but I think even he would agree that he was making too much. Now money has brought the world as we knew it for a short time to a shuddering if temporary halt. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are throwing our communal wealth at the problem. We are now major shareholders in the banks that so recently underpinned our economy. Happily, the stock market seems to be rising in response.

There is a sense of having followed Alice into Wonderland. Actually, I think we have just emerged. The truth is that most of us will never have a mountain of money. But it is also true that a mountain of money isn't what most of us really want or need. (Our better self-made millionaires are determinedly giving theirs away.) If we don't have debt and we do have a life that involves family, friends, art, literature, sport, science, music - whatever engages our interest - we will be rich in the only way that matters.