Q: All of a sudden, we find very educated and smart people having a tough time coping with the effects of the credit crunch. What guidance would be the most appropriate to those who are hit by the crisis, and to those on the fringes?

A: This underscores the fact that to be educated and smart is not the same as being intelligent. To be intelligent is to be intimately alive to certain realities.
In life, loss is inevitable. Everyone knows this, yet in the core of most people it remains deeply denied- 'This should not happen to me.' It is for this reason that loss is the most difficult challenge one has to face as a human being.
So the first step in coping with loss is to accept that it has happened. How? We have to start with the facts. If the fact is that I cannot accept it, I first accept that I cannot accept it. This is where prayer will help; eventually, being kind to oneself and being prayerful, one will be able to accept the fact.
Grief will follow, naturally, since one is human. Being human is a matter for celebration, so we need to respect that grief, even, I would say, welcome it. It is as much a part of the natural order of things as loss. This acceptance of loss and the attendant grief involves so many things, but one of the most important things is not to waste energy blaming, either oneself or others, even when there are perceived injustices.
Here, our understanding of karma is a great blessing to us, and we can press it into service to help us move on. Then we are free to focus our energies on finding solutions to this new problem.
And above all, we are free to ask, "What do I learn from this situation?" What is crucial in dealing with loss, is not to lose the lesson. That makes you a winner in the most profound sense.
None of this is easy; there can be a certain helplessness at any stage, right from accepting the loss. But here we can help ourselves a lot with prayer. Prayer in any form is efficacious, because it is an action. It will, therefore, have a result. That is the law of this universe in which we find ourselves.