Seven Years of economic crisis
The first stirrings of what would later be called the “sub-prime crisis” were observed in August 2006, in the midst of the greatest possible indifference. Hence, seven years have gone by since the western world stumbled over itself.
Seven years is a long time. It marked the end of an era, one of lack of concern about globalisation which people thought was positive, confusing it with the century of the colonies. Seven years is long enough to pulverise stock exchanges and fragile banks, to see an economy collapse and to witness a levitation of public debt. This also allows us to wonder about the finitude of a growth model through public debt, and about a single currency that no longer convinces most of Europe’s citizens.
Seven years, that is also the Biblical number that reveals a new world, i.e. young people out of work, while our ageing populations worry about protecting their privileges. It is time to ask ourselves whether our societies are just, because in Europe they choose to give priority to the monetary symbol at the expense of the detriment of employment. Nevertheless, is it not shameful to tolerate mass unemployment among young people, i.e. the annihilation of all their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, while forcing older workers to get a job despite the tremendous technological changeover which often leaves them behind? And is there not something indecent, even completely wrong, in imposing contexts of austerity in the middle of a terrible recession on countries from the South, through a cold approach of political one-upmanship on the part of the European Commission? Finally, is it right to protect a strong currency with weak employment, because in the countries of the South budget austerity leads to unemployment rates even higher than those of the 1930s?
Seven years, a term also used by people who had fiercely criticised the financial system while forgetting that complacent States have also been surpassed by their own level of debt. It is also a sufficient term to attest that certain older heads of banks strayed off the straight and narrow, not so much into risky strategies as in forgetting their responsibility to the common good that they manage and produce: the currency.
Seven years, also a time for introspection. We can now sense a deep malaise among long-term political leaders. They have been blamed for the collapse of a prosperous economy that is difficult for them to assume. The same goes for the signatories of the Maastricht Treaty: they dreamed up a new currency without ensuring its budgetary basis, a bit like naively proclaiming victory before having declared war. In 2012, the architects of the Euro celebrated the 20 years of their monetary construction in the shadows, like defeated leaders with only exile as a way out. Moreover, the new generation does not understand how the European peace could be invoked to justify a currency that flattens the weaker economies. For this generation, wartime had come and gone before they were born. For the rest, the political formulation of Europe worries people, not so much due to its lack of economic vision as to the fact that its discourse is not anchored in the reality of its people. Whether you call it neo-liberal or social-democrat, this Europe creates as many sceptics as the old political dogmas did.
Thirty years ago, we started to collectively indebt our countries to soften the transition to the service economy, very different from the industrial context. We hoped that future demographics and productivity would get us out of a swelling public debt painlessly. Unfortunately, this hope for a ‘welfare State’ that paid itself back would have required a geographically static economy. This did not take globalisation into account, a process that shifts progress and growth to other nations as they open up, and to other markets.
We are now undertaking a new transition, that of technological inventiveness and the liberation of creativity. This technological transition will belong to the young. That is why we cannot crush them under stifling unemployment, because that would be the sad illustration of the fact that the post-war baby-boomers had not handed them the baton of growth. Faced with a world in a ruinous state, the only thing they could pass on are crushing debts.
The past cannot be replaced: it dissipates. This crisis will never end. There will be no far-fetched “after” at the end of which our communities will return to the past. There will be no restoration of the old regimes, nor any return to the stable base of the old economy.
Indeed, this crisis cannot end because it has become the thread of the story itself, i.e. a continuous yearning for the preceding century. That is perhaps where the terrible lesson of the crash of 2006-2013 lies: for a very long time we believed that we could get back to a time that only post-war growth had propitiated, through the repair of the world that our ancestors had mutilated.
Seven years and an unending crisis; the time has come to turn the page on the 20th century and recognise that new ideas are needed. It is the time of a pathetic change from the now-distant service society to the world of instantaneous exchange.
Seven years. It is also perhaps the time to ask the question of the new era and realise that a modern universe is emerging, without having foreseen or conjured it. This universe, which can only take form through our youth – which we need to pass a lot over to – is still to be invented. Young people are claiming their autonomy everywhere, for their well-being or their freedom of thought. We cannot ignore this.
