In this new book, Jacques de Larosière analyzes the causes of France's decline. Taking the elites to task, he calls for a quick and decisive end to the politics of denial and easy monetary and fiscal solutions.
"Why have we come to this point? And how do we emerge from it?
"The issue is ultimately a triple servitude that occupies the public sphere and overwhelms our thinking: servitude to a false doctrine, that of the continuous expansion of demand inspired by a poorly understood Keynesianism; servitude to reassuring propaganda, encouraged by public authorities; and intellectual servitude in which political correctness takes precedence over freedom of thought and expression.
"If we don't turn the tables, chances are good that our decline will continue, the point of catastrophe in a few years."
J. de L.
I had the privilege of being involved in some of these 'ways out of crisis'. I lived through their dramatic intensity and was, sometimes, able to contribute to pragmatic solutions which helped to steady the ship. This was true, for example, of the Latin American crisis, negotiation of the IMF adjustment programmes and aiding the transition of the Eastern European countries.
But the picture is still dark. The 2007-2008 crisis, with its trail of unemployment and recession, is an extreme example of what excess debt can do. And quantitative easing policies, implemented to minimize the effects of the 'great recession' despite its origins in the abuse of debt, plunge an observer like myself into an abyss of questions and doubts." From the collapse of Bretton Woods to that of Lehman Brothers, a first-hand account of fifty years of financial crises by a participant on the front lines of finance and currency.
The memoirs of an exceptional, influential man who worked alongside Jacques Delors, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Raymond Barre, Paul Volcker, and many others.
«We all know that our world has become very indebted over the past decades and that its 'financialization' has reached proportions never observed before, at least in peacetime.
But how serious is this phenomenon?
What are its consequences on the solidity of our financial system, on the functioning of our economy and on the future of our society?
Above all, we must understand how our world has surreptitiously changed its model for the past two decades. It has slipped to a strange paradigm, one in which the bulk of economic activity is now reflected in the rise in the value of financial assets at the expense of growth, wage income and productive investment.
It is time to put an end to the reign of illusion and to reinstate the fundamental economic springs without which there can be no real growth.» J. de L.
