Americans are angry in part because changes happening gradually over many years have finally caught up with our personal and national realities ("Angry Americans: What do you want?" Oct. 5). And we no longer can pretend they have not. It is now truly one world with events occurring or originating overseas directly and immediately affecting our lives. We can no longer use easy credit or home equity money to prop up life styles beyond our means — not only lifestyles of the too extravagant but, more importantly, those of families barely getting by. Banks and Wall Street were saved to prevent another Depression, but now they resist regulation because it presumably undermines capitalism. Self-serving moneyed interests magnify anger and hostility to create in-roads for their own purposes.

At times of difficult change human beings often place their anger initially on those seeming to be in charge, whether political leaders, the boss, or as children, parents. Instead, we must face the fact that there are no easy answers. When in such new, unfamiliar territory, it is particularly important that our president, all political leaders and candidates present serious solutions clearly, consistently, strongly and as rationally as possible — without the rhetoric, vitriol, and confusion that further encourages generalized, unproductive anger.

Kathleen B. Wilson, Baltimore