Despite the media brainwashing, and apart from laudatory comments from some
politicians, not one qualified expert can take seriously what was played in
Pittsburgh.
Certainly, and very largely thanks to Nicolas Sarkozy, the G-20 took place,
and it’s better than nothing. But it is not new: since exactly 20 years,
with the Summit of the Arch, which was held on July 14th, 1989, in Paris,
heads of state of the South are participating in the G-7 which has then
become the G-8. And the countries of the South, in Pittsburgh were only
reaffirming, like in the previous years, the need to strengthen the place of
India and China, in the IMF, at the expense of Europe, without the United
States losing its right of veto and without sub-Saharan Africa, absent in
the G-20, being properly represented.
Of course, thanks largely to the French President and Christine Lagarde, the
diagnosis of the crisis was first correctly stated: the lack of capital and
banks control.
But, as might be expected, nothing concrete has been decided to address
these causes. And even less to remedy its consequences. And much less still
to prevent its return.
First, there are no plans to implement some declarations of intent,
promising to overcome the causes of the crisis, harmonizing the capital of
European banks and U.S. banks…in 2012: As if facing a fire, we are assured
that everything is ok because we are promised that the firefighters will
come tomorrow. Furthermore, the G-20 wants the capital equity necessary to
cover the risks of speculation for one’s own benefit to be higher. But here
again, only words: no decision specifies which authority will put this in
place. And even if it was the case, this official statement definitively
buries the necessary separation between the professions of commercial banker
and investment banker, whose confusion is nevertheless at the root of the
crisis. Nothing either on the regulation of non-banking financial
professions. No progress, on the whole, towards the establishment of a
Worldwide organization of Finance, the only one which could turn these sound
promises into reality.
Then, nothing on the consequences of the crisis: nothing on the public
deficits (8 % at least this year in France, and more than 13 % in the United
States!) neither on unemployment, nor on the balance of currencies, nor on
the assistance to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
Finally, nothing to prevent the return of the crisis, which would require to
encourage the Western world to save more, to improve productivity, to train
talents, to replace raw and polluting materials by technical progress.
In fact, this G-20 was a demonstration of a world which evolves towards a
dialogue between China and the United States, towards a G-2, which
recognizes its inability to solve the crisis, which admits that, for lack of
bank credit to businesses, public help via revival should continue to make
the world live on credit, leaving to the taxpayers of tomorrow the care of
paying the losses of the bankers of yesterday and the bonuses of the current
bankers.