Capitalism works out of helping others. People don't buy products or services unless they think they're better for them. Capitalism is the empathic system, if there truly is one. Socialism is the one that mandates products and services based on the ideals of the controlling powers. That sounds selfish to me.

I'd like to clarify that the financial sector didn't cause the recession. Several other modern countries did the exact same stuff and didn't have such calamitous effects. The one thing they all share in common is central banks that were targeting a growth level. These countries has stable money while the ones where money collapsed ended up having huge recessions. Most of the central banks of the West are still operating on monetary regimes of meager growth. The BoE has been much better than the rest of the EU, and the results have been great in comparison.