Have you looked at what the government is doing? they're desperately trying to jump start the next bubble... in the next 5 years they'll be looking to start a world war to get the market up to new highs... it worked a couple of times in the last century...
I'd rather be 25 barely making ends meat, than 55 which as it looks now ALOT of people will be doing. Your generation had it good on the upswing, but screwed it all up and now we are all going to pay for the failure.
The knowledge about good money management, investing, economics etc is starting to creep into the mainstream. It is not coming from their parents though, it is coming from their peers and the internet. Part of the problem(solution) of todays mess is that so many people are aware of the issues and understand them and that makes confidence alot more difficult to obtain. If the markets want any long term holders from the next generation, the status quo is going to have to change. We can only hope they go in with a fresh set of thinking and are able to mop up the mess laid down by the previous generation.
You misunderstand the difference between resource wars and world wars. To determine who calls the shots, you first have a world war. Markets are shattered, industries nationalized, commodities confiscated, then a victor or victors with the least damage arise and become(s) the hegemon. With this comes an accepted world currency after a global debt jubilee. (see the end of WWI and WWII) World wars determine who gets to pick the next resource wars. These are wars for resources, markets, and access to cheap labor. We are already king of the hill (the hegemon), so to speak, so a world war would only occur if a nation or a new block of nations want to militarily challenge the US. We would be crazy to start one because of the extreme destruction involved. And we already learned our lessons with Iraq and Vietnam that sometimes resource or proxy wars have a diminishing rate of return on investment. Returning to the OP, either way, the net generation faces an uncertain world. One in which they can do little about. Let them enjoy their ipods and other gadgets, for these may be the best days of their lives before they assume the massive responsibility of caring (paying) for the exploding aged population amidst a very uncertain world. I do not begrudge their current self indulgences.
No I didn't work directly with any of them. They were on the trading floor. I was in corporate finance/M&A. The only time we worked with the trading floor was when we took the deals across to them to see if they could sell the bonds into their markets or discuss how the deals could be restructured to make them more appealing to the buyers.