We have become explorers of unknown lands

We have become explorers of unknown lands. That's what say immediately industrialists, politicians, financiers and the experts once asked about what we live in today. Shock without precedent, both in its brutality, its extent and its scope. This sense of unknown causes anxiety it as unprecedented. It is thus urgent to see what looks like the crisis has not yet name.

Turn on the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. Of course, the high-tech shares had lost four fifths of their value, as those of banks. However, in late 2001, Americans were asked if their economy was in recession while she was already out. And, in France, the growth was only abated. Therefore we are going to the last French recession in 1993. As today, the French had much borrowed from previous years. A housing bubble exploded in the early 1990s, on the accounts of bankers and insurers. And, in 1993, cars registrations were unscrewed 18 "have never given it", was then effaraient manufacturers. But, despite these woes, despite also with interest rates imported from Germany, housing starts decreased by 27 over four years, while they will have lost as much this time in two years. The production had declined "" by 1, whereas the decline may exceed 3 in 2009. At the time, if Europe was ill, the world was in full recovery.

1975: an economic shock

Therefore, further back in time, to the "oil shock" of 1974, to find a crisis at the same time in all industrialized countries. But, if the brutal quadrupled the price of black gold had created a shock terrible after three decades of unbridled growth, global activity had never slowed less than 2, while it will decrease this year, for the first time since the second world war. In France, the withdrawal had been limited to 1 in 1975. And the oil-rich countries spent their money. If world trade surged by 7 in 1975, he rebounded by 11 the following year. The crisis was economic, not banking. This is why "we had never given it": no one has the memory of a financial earthquake.

At least in the major developed countries. Because many people who have suffered a real financial crisis, Argentines in 2001, Koreans in 1997, Japanese in 1992, the Swedes in 1991... Two American economists, Carmen Reinhart (University of Maryland) and Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard) have an average of fifteen of these financial crises ("The aftermath of financial crises", NBER, January 2009). They are orders of magnitude which are beginning to remember what is happening today. Lower prices of real estate of a third party, of the stock in half. Rise of the unemployment of 7 points in five years in France, this fly to a 14 rate. Fall of 9. These calamities were detonated on average debt... 86. Brussels has not finished strangle on deficits!

Signs of deflation

However, comparison may not go all the way. As these episodes were national or regional, not global. The victims were able to restart by increasing their exports to the rest of the world, as did Asian countries at the end of the 1990s. No, decidedly, only the crisis of the 1930s may serve as a reference. After all, the only year where the Wall Street stock market had declined more 40, before 2008, it was 1931. The crisis is global (the crash in New York is triggered by the repatriation of European capital following the bankruptcy of an Austrian savings bank). It begins in finance, translates into a drop in production that began before the financial turmoil, caused a slump in international trade. Born of an orgy of debts, it causes a collapse of credit, bank failures and suicides. And it occurs in a profound intellectual confusion, as shown in the journalist François Lenglet in his book "the crisis of the 1930s is before us" (Perrin, 2007).

But by chance, if we have not seen the 1930s we have memory. Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has spent more than a decade to dissect them. At the time, he opened in grand monetary tap, while its predecessors had closed it 1930. He organized the rescue of large banks, with the exception of Lehman Brothers. The US Government increases massively public expenditure, that he had delayed to once. And, despite a few shots of pocket knife, countries now resist the protectionist temptation. Not to mention other differences, as shock absorbers of social welfare and public spending his weight in national wealth has more than doubled in three quarters of a century.

In fact, if the dark pre-war years were common points with the end of the 2000s, it remains too early to say whether the reference is good. Will thousands of billion euros injected by the States avoid purchasing gloom The rescue of banks is effective We will continue to resist the protectionist Most importantly, we prevent the spread of the lower prices This deflation, characteristic of the 1930s, had overcome the consumers and businesses, because it had decreased revenue and each other without lowering their debts, which were therefore drawn a growing share of the income. But signs of deflation are present today.

But, if the place is not the same, the cause is probably the same. In a crisis of such violence, there is always a telluric forces at play, a shift of economic plates of the world. In 1929, a double revolution was underway. Economic and monetary revolution with a global leadership across the Atlantic to Europe to the United States. Industrial revolution, with the growth of a mass production of a formidable efficiency. Today also, a double revolution rocked the world. Global leadership through this time Pacific. And production switches in the digital era, with a double challenge the passage of the mass to measure production, material to the immaterial.

At the end of this quest, doubt suddenly slips. And whether to get a parallel much later in the past It was the suggestion of a book published there is more than a decade, "The return of the very great depression" (Economica, 1997). For their authors, the consultant Maurice Décaillot and journalist Jean-Louis Gombeaud, we are now in the apocalypse of the competition. As under the Roman Empire, as in the 14th century, the rivalry between producers developed at breakneck speed. In the 100 years as in the 1300 years, the growth of large trade is collapsing prices. Poverty then prevailing the world in chaos lasts long decades. Of course, the thesis appears to be extravagant. But, to understand the current crisis, we need to change our way of seeing the world, as our ancestors did in the 1930s.