Seven years of economic crisis
The first shockwaves of what would be called the “sub-prime” crisis in August 2006 were felt in a climate of general indifference. Seven long years have passed during which the Western world has been rocked on its feet. Those years have marked the end of the insouciance about globalisation cultivated by favourable opinions and mistaken comparisons with the colonialist era. In those seven years, stock markets and weak banks imploded, economies collapsed and public debt rose by levitation. We have also begun to wonder about the limits of a growth model based on public debt and a single currency no longer supported by most citizens.
Seven years has a biblical symbolism. The past seven years have revealed the existence of a new world, unemployed young people, alongside ageing populations worried about protecting their advantages. The time has also come to question the fairness of our European societies, which value an emblematic currency more than labour.
It is shameful to tolerate the mass unemployment of young people that destroys creativity and entrepreneurship, while older workers are forced into jobs despite many being overtaken by the massive technological changes. It is indecent, and completely wrong, to impose austerity on the Southern countries in the midst of a severe recession because the European Commission considers it politically expedient. Lastly, it is ill-advised to bolster a strong currency with weak employment when fiscal austerity in the countries of the South has brought unemployment rates higher than those of the 1930s.
The past seven years have blunted the rhetoric of those who heaped blame on the financial system while forgetting that complacent governments had been overwhelmed by their own indebtedness. With hindsight, we can also assert that some former banking leaders were led astray not by risky strategies but because they lost sight of their social responsibility for that common good which they oversee and manufacture: money.
Seven years gives time for introspection. A deep-seated unease can now be felt among long-standing political leaders. After distinguishing themselves in a flourishing economy, they now find it hard to bear the responsibility for its decay. The same applies to the signatories of the Maastricht Treaty. They devised a new currency without adequate fiscal foundations, as if victory was proclaimed before war was declared.
In 2012, the euro’s architects celebrated the 20th anniversary of their monetary invention discreetly, like defeated rulers united only by their exile. The younger generation fails to understand how peace in Europe can justify a currency that devastates the weak economies. For the present generation, the era of world wars finished well before its birth. Moreover, Europe’s political set-up is worrisome not so much for its lack of economic vision as for the disconnection of the EU narrative from people's everyday lives. Whether you label it neoliberal or social democrat, this Europe engenders as much scepticism as the old political dogmas.
30 years ago our countries began borrowing to smooth the transition to a service economy very different from an industrial economy. We had hoped that demographics and productivity would in the future rescue us painlessly from expanding public debt. Unfortunately, the hopes pinned on a self-financing welfare state required a geographically static economy. No attention was paid to globalisation. Progress and growth nowadays move to those places where populations and markets are the most open. Today we are witnessing a new transition to technological inventiveness and creative freedom. It will be a technological transition of the younger generation.
We cannot therefore burden it with stifling unemployment as this would be the sad illustration of the post-war baby boomers failing to provide any springboard for future growth. Confronted by a world in ruins, the boomers would merely be handing over a world riddled with debt. The past cannot be replicated. It fades away. This crisis will never be over. There will not be a dream-like “afterwards” when our communities revert to the pattern of the past. There will be no repetition of old scenarios nor any return to the stabilised basis of a former economy. This crisis cannot end because it has itself become a thread of history, a continuation of the previous century’s self-questioning. This is perhaps the terrible lesson of the 2006-2013 shock. For a very long time, we thought we could perpetuate an era made possible only thanks to the post-war growth generated by the restoration of a world our ancestors mutilated.
Seven years on and an unending crisis later, it is time to turn the page of the 20th century and acknowledge that established ideas have a limited lifespan. We are completing the painful transformation from a disappearing services economy to a world of instant communication. Seven years is also perhaps the moment to wonder about the nature of these new times and to realise that a modern universe is taking shape which we neither anticipated nor devised. It is still undefined and can only emerge from the younger population, for whose benefit much needs to be sacrificed. Young people everywhere are demanding autonomy for the sake of their well-being and freedom of thought. We cannot ignore them.
