La Face Cachée de la Dette - Mieux comprendre les mécanismes de la dette - Documentaire - AT

We are all in debt, you, me, the companies, the States. Today the great machine of the economy is driven by debt. We live on credit.

Our homes, our cars, our schools, government spending are financed by borrowing. Debt has become the real fuel of the economy and the engine of global growth. We are all caught in the gears of an economic machine that produces more and more debt day after day.

And this machine has gone into overdrive, it has become uncontrollable and the public debt, the debt of the states, is exploding. The eurozone is having a much harder time than other countries getting out of this debt crisis. For what ?

And what are the solutions? Yes It’s a debt machine. When you're in it, it's very difficult to get out.

Debt really creates a system, that is to say, we feel that we are guilty of being in debt. What if we started everything from scratch. If we created a debt system that is viable, that does not destroy us like the current debt machine.

In general we cannot say that public debt is a problem, all the countries are in debt and in any case as we have economic growth, that is to say the creation of additional wealth each year we can afford to go into debt, that’s pretty healthy. The real problem is when your debt spirals out of control on its own, that is to say when you have reached such a level that you cannot control the dynamics and the increase of this debt from year to year. From a certain level of debt, the state is caught in a spiral.

To repay its debt and its interest, the state has no other choice but to borrow more and more every year. Most Eurozone countries are in this situation today. They borrow massively on the financial markets - and from large private banks which compete fiercely for this clientele.

. . Banks love to lend to States.

For what ? Because behind the States, there are millions of taxpayers. And it's not like buyers or consumers, these taxpayers are still there.

And new ones are born every day, who will pay taxes for 150 years. Unless the country goes bankrupt. So why not lend them since you are sure to be reimbursed!

Because a country does not normally go bankrupt. And so you will always be able to benefit from it. It’s a risk-free loan, whereas a company that wants to innovate, and which has decided to produce, let’s say… steam engines, it’s much riskier!

Why invest in this? Why not lend instead to the Spanish, Italian or Portuguese states? Since I know that, behind them, there are the German and French taxpayers who guarantee this debt.

So it’s safe for me! In Europe, state debt is dizzying: 500 billion, 1000 billion, 2000 billion euros. .

. . But these figures do not mean much.

. . if we do not compare them to the wealth of the country, the GDP.

The debt of a country is measured as a percentage of this GDP. Here the debt represents "50% " and there " 100%” of GDP. At the time of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, European experts decided, so that the debt did not spiral out of control, that it should not exceed 60% of GDP.

But these critical thresholds were largely exceeded by most European countries. It's a catastrophic situation because from that moment on, you no longer have the ability to do what you want in terms of fiscal policy. When the debt exceeds a certain level, taxes are then used, above all, to pay the interest on the debt instead of financing state expenditure: hospitals, schools, teachers, etc.

How can we repay this debt? How to get out of this spiral? Do you always have to repay debt?

That's a real question, well you have to repay your debt if you need to ask for more money from the people who lent you, that's the rule. That is to say that you can very well not repay your debts, if we take the French examples before the French Revolution, the debts contracted by the kings of France have never been repaid, we have always despoiled those who were lending. It turns out that the political power of the time meant that people who lent didn't have much choice and otherwise found themselves in prison if they refused to continue lending.

“Debt” has always existed. It dates from the beginning of the history of civilization. It even preceded the invention of money.

The first writings found in Mesopotamia are in fact debts and credits, calculations of what each owes, and to whom. The credit system therefore already existed, while money did not yet exist. If private debt has always existed, public debt, state debt, was born in Italy in the great merchant cities at the end of the Middle Ages.

Florence, Genoa, Venice spend their time waging war, which costs them very dearly. To finance these wars, sovereigns borrow from the great patrician families. The first public debt securities are exchanged, producing interest.

These large families of creditors will found the first Italian banks. These bankers began to lend a lot of money to European monarchs, engaged in endless wars. They will most of the time be ruined by these warlike rulers.

An expeditious process for getting rid of debt, and which will be used for centuries. . .

At that time the states had power over their creditors; it is only much later that this balance of power will be reversed. After the Second World War, everything had to be rebuilt. Thanks to the money lent by the Americans as part of the Marshall Plan and the massive creation of money, industrialized countries will experience exceptional growth.

This is the prosperous period, known as the 30 Glorious Years. Business is going well. Industry is running at full speed and consumption is developing spectacularly.

. . But it's ridiculous to talk about the 30 glorious years, there were the 30 glorious years because everything was on the ground, because we were rebuilding so it was effectively real estate plus automobiles plus access to American consumer goods, such as washing machines, refrigerators, etc.

have meant that for 30 years there has been a phenomenon of reconstruction, and of catching up with the phenomenal standard of living. A good war. .

. if you destroy half of Paris, you will have an extraordinary growth phenomenon , in terms of GDP you will measure the GDP and indeed you will see that the GDP will be of considerable growth. At the end of the 30 Glorious years, at the beginning of the 1970s, thanks to growth and inflation, the public debt curve of European countries was at its lowest.

But the economic machine will be disrupted by two major events. First shock: On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon, President of the United States, whose coffers had been emptied of their gold reserves by the Vietnam War, made a resounding announcement that would shake up the world economy. To defend the dollar against speculators, I have directed the Secretary of the Treasury to temporarily suspend the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in quantities and conditions deemed favorable to monetary stability and the interests of the United States.

. But this measure is not temporary; the American president definitively cuts the parity link between the dollar and gold. The value of the dollar then becomes “floating”, just like that of currencies around the world.

All currencies, which were linked either to the American Dollar, in 1971, or to the British Pound, become currencies which are no longer backed by anything. They hold on thanks to the trust that people can have in them. This abandonment of the dollar standard opens the way to significant stock market speculation on currencies.

The free movement of capital on international markets is intensifying. This is the beginning of a period of great financial instability. Two years later in 1973, another major event: the first oil shock.

In one year, the price of a barrel explodes, going from 2 to 6 dollars. We are moving from a world of economic certainty to a world of uncertainty. The price of oil between 1945 and 1970 was flat.

So we have absolute predictability. We can do econometric models, we know exactly what the price will be. It’s pretty much the same thing for currencies.

There we enter a totally different world where not only do oil prices move like white noise, therefore unpredictable… Exactly the same thing for exchange rates. The surge in oil prices will weigh heavily on the global economy. It puts a brake on growth.

Production costs rise, prices rise and inflation explodes. This inflation has a major drawback: it impoverishes savers and investors, since their money depreciates. For governments, inflation therefore becomes the new enemy, to be fought at all costs.

From the moment you enter a world where inflation is much lower, it tends to disadvantage investments and favor financial investments. We must see the economy as a struggle, if you like, in the classic way we will say, between employees and bosses, that's the old classic story, which still exists of course, and we must also see it as a big fight between creditors and debtors, or financiers and producers, that 's the big fight which is, which we don't see, but which is behind all the choices in terms of inflation, in terms of strong currency, etc. This is what we can call the dictatorship of creditors.

It is no longer the debtors who make the law like in the 30 Glorious Years where it was the entrepreneurs and the consumers who made the law, it is now the creditors who make the law, and it is a completely different economy , because the creditors need an economy that is perpetually in debt and they need an economy where the currency is very strong, on these two things we need, especially no inflation because their capital is devalues, and above all that the debt continues since we continue to repay the debt. So we are moving from a predominantly industrial world, with. .

. where productive investments are favored, to a world where finance plays a much more central role. So from the point of view of public debt, it has a considerable impact because all the countries which start to be in debt will have more difficulty managing their debts.

From the 1980s, industrialized countries began to borrow massively on the international market and their public debt continued to increase. Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Reagan in the United States come to power. It is the advent of neo-liberalism, an economic doctrine which is spreading throughout Europe.

Taxes are being lowered everywhere, public goods are privatized, these will be the “money years”. The stock markets are developing: Wall Street in New York, the City in London. On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are “deregulating” bank credit.

Capital flows are being exchanged unrestrained on markets around the world. By deregulating and liberalizing, these governments have become dependent on financial markets, which are now essential. The “debt machine” is set up.

Everyone gets into debt, states, businesses and individuals. The economic system becomes a debt manufacturing machine . And banks get rich thanks to the interest paid by borrowers.

Credit becomes the main fuel for growth. But how does credit work? Banks actually only have a portion of the money they lend.

Money is created by private banks upon a simple request for credit and a promise of repayment. It’s huge, you know! The way we have always created money is a wonderful thing.

A financial system that can create credit like that is wonderful, because you can generate money in the event of a crisis, you can bail out A. I. G, invest in the ecological transition, finance a war.

And that’s what we’ve always done! The public did not understand this. People think that money comes “because I work hard”: you know, dig the ground, work hard, and at the end of the month I get a salary.

Money, what we call money which is created by banks every day, in fact it should be a public good, but it has become a private good, money is a bit like money. The air we breathe is what allows us to live, eh money, and good like water, like air which should be public goods, the day the air is privatized you will be very unfortunate, eh, you'll have to put some, one euro coins to get your liter of air. Money which had become a public good, meaning it was the State which managed monetary creation, became a private good again, meaning created by banks, created by autonomous powers, great autonomous powers, in the 70s and after that it only grew.

And that gives them control over the economy that they didn't have. Since it was rather the producers who had the supervision of the economy and now it is the financiers who have the supervision of the economy. Central banks produce 5% of the world's credit.

Private banks produce and create 95% of the world's credit from nothing, without any regulation. And Keynes affirmed in 1930: “we must regulate this system, it risks producing enormous debt bubbles. It can explode, we have to control it.

” Following the crisis of 29, the great English economist John Maynard Keynes already warned politicians: we must control the credit manufacturing machine, so that it does not run only for the benefit of speculation but for the benefit of all the company. As long as we controlled the financial system between 1945 and 1971, there was not a single financial crisis in the world. But in 1971 the bankers said: “no, no, no, no!

We don't need control, the market will discipline us, etc. …” and we started to remove the rules and the crises began, one after the other, first in the peripheral countries then at the heart of the system. In 1999 we witnessed the advent of the euro and the creation of the European Central Bank which would ensure its stability was maintained.

At that time, global growth was strong and the public debt curve was slightly inverted. Europe is breathing. .

. The financial markets, rather confident, then lend generously to the states. And the economically weakest, Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal suddenly have access to loans, at very low interest rates , close to the rates granted to Germany.

This low-cost financial windfall boosts the economy. Everything is fine. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a real estate bubble is growing.

And the sub prime crisis breaks out. Thousands of homeowners are being evicted from their homes: they accepted mortgage offers at skyrocketing rates and are now unable to repay these loans. Many banking establishments are under threat.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the largest American investment banks, collapsed. The Lehmann Brothers crisis is more than a speculative phenomenon, it is a speculative phenomenon, but it is a Ponzi scheme, that is to say even more interesting, that is to say that what is What happened before the fall of Lehmann Brother was that there had to be more and more pigeons entering the market for the system to continue to grow, that is to say that , effectively, we could only repay the debts because there were more and more creditors entering the market until the funds had been scraped and the last creditors had returned. The last creditors were those who could not pay, they were the Subprime, that is to say they were the blacks of Louisiana who had no money to repay their house, but they had been told what the value was.

of your house will increase you will be able to potentially resell it and repay it, which did not happen. So from that moment, the Ponzi chain collapsed and it was like a house of cards, it was the bankruptcy of the one who supposedly guaranteed this whole chain, that is to say Lehmann Brothers. After the fall of Lehman Brothers, European banks which were closely linked to American banks are in turn at risk of going bankrupt.

Governments barely save them to avoid a collapse of the entire system. So we are in this vicious circle where we have state support, which allows banks to grow ever more, to develop activities which make them ever more fragile and since they are fragile we must support them even more, therefore more I am fragile, the more you have to support me, the more you support me the more I. .

. I grow, the more I grow, the more I make the system fragile. This system must be stopped.

In Spain and Ireland, after the advent of the euro, thanks to credits granted by private German, French and English banks, developers invested massively in real estate. We concreted the entire coast, the entire Mediterranean coast of Spain, we built airports everywhere. In Ireland we built housing well beyond the needs, we speculated, we made Dublin a capital almost as expensive as New York.

See you in a, a small island like Ireland. The Irish governments of the time, the Spanish governments of the time, could not fail to see that what was developing was a bubble. This bubble burst which resulted in colossal losses for the banks and real estate companies which had invested and the states had no other choice, or in any case made the choice, to come to the rescue of their financial sector.

And so overnight, when the Irish government says “I undertake to fully guarantee all losses suffered by my big banks” well then obviously, what we are doing is transferring an unrecoverable private debt onto the books of the government, that is to say we make it public debt. . .

From the moment you enter the big leagues, in the big systemic banks as they say, that is to say the banks, which we can think that no one will let them down because if they collapse, they bring in their wake the collapse of the economy. When you are part of this club, you find yourself in an extraordinary, extraordinary position because it is possible for you to make the craziest bets, the craziest financial bets, to lend to anyone at the time. that it pays off because you know that as long as it makes money it makes money for you, and when it no longer makes money or it costs, that is to say when you start to make losses, the State will be there.

So it's an extraordinary casino because heads I win, tails the taxpayer pays, it's fantastic. In the old Regime, if I may say so, in the old regime the danger is the State, when it does not pay and it endangers the banks, because when the State stops paying its debts, his debts, he endangers the bankers who lent him.  There is a big difficulty there, it is indeed the new function, the new place of the banks in relation to the economic circuit.

If states are obliged to bail out the banks, it is because today they can no longer go bankrupt, since these banks are us. These are the accounts of millions of citizens. We are caught in the machine.

The economic crisis and the bailout of banks by states lead to a spectacular increase in public debts in Europe. And the debt machine is racing. The first country to announce bankruptcy will be Greece, in November 2009.

Barely elected, Prime Minister Georges Papandreou then reveals the real figures which had been hidden until then by previous governments. The Greek public debt reaches 129% of GDP, well above the 60% threshold set by Maastricht. He asks for help from Europe.

“It is an urgent national necessity to officially ask our European partners to activate the support mechanism that we have created together. » This announcement has the effect of a thunderclap in the European space. The euro zone is called into question.

“We also think about the future because Europe is our own future, that is why Wolf Schäuble did not make proposals for Greece but so that in the future we have a treaty with which we would have the possibility, as a last resort, to exclude a country from the euro zone if it does not meet, in the long term, again and again. . .

the right conditions. Otherwise, we can’t work together. ” Will Europe respect the Maastricht agreements which prohibit the European Central Bank from bailing out indebted countries?

European authorities are procrastinating: will they act as guarantor for Greece? Should we restructure, cancel part of the Greek debt or help Greece repay its creditors? The heads of state cannot agree.

While Europe hesitates, markets speculate and confidence in Greek debt collapses. There was real concern: if Greece's debt was restructured, the markets risked withdrawing from Spain, Italy, "La Belle" France, a catastrophe that Europe wanted to avoid at all costs. So we decided that it was better to give Greece the money it needed to repay its debts rather than letting the markets fear that it would not pay, and that this behavior would be contagious and spread to other countries.

It was only six months after the start of the crisis that, despite resistance from Germany, Europe decided to lend Greece enough to repay its creditors. At that time, if we had reacted as a united bloc, as a European bloc, that is to say, we would have said. .

. " Listen, Greece, it's part of the Europe of the euro zone, we're going to wipe it out, we don't want anyone who meddles in our affairs”, we would have closed the problem, there would have been no crisis in Europe, it turns out that this political union did not take place. That in May 2010 European countries decided to break up the Eurozone or let the Eurozone be broken up by financial markets and financial attacks and since then, we are paddling against the tide, but we are having a lot of difficulty getting back up.

the torrent because, the least we can say is that a lot of water has flowed since May 2010. What are these aid plans for Greece in fact ? These are European States which are replacing private creditors to ensure the financing of the Greek debt.

Not a single Euro of debt is erased at that time, what changes is the identity of the creditors. The money owed to creditors in 2010 is now owed to the IMF and the European Union. If you can resolve a debt crisis simply by changing the identity of the creditors, then yes the crisis is over.

Greece lives and is experienced as an experiment, and the Greeks experience themselves as laboratory rats, the depth of the crisis is much greater than the famous crash of 1929. So it is really something unknown. On the other hand, the policy applied to it is a policy which does not bring results and which deepens the recession, which widens the deficits, which increases the debt, which brings down the GNP and which makes people lose all bearings.

Being in debt is not just about owing money, it is about being at fault. There is the financial debt, but there is also a moral debt which weighs just as heavily on the inhabitants of indebted countries. Debt and guilt, the double punishment.

We felt guilty and the measures, the program at the beginning seemed like a sort of punishment. And I think that at the beginning we accepted this punishment because it responded to a feeling of guilt that we had. Just because I live in Greece I would be guilty ?

Would I be a sinner? Because the politicians acted wrongly! And so I should accept that lives are destroyed, that those who are hungry rummage through trash, that those who have cancer have no access to care?

We must refuse this logic, and accuse the guilty rather than holding the community responsible for the acts committed by a few. It is not a sin to go into debt and it is very regrettable that certain cultures or certain political approaches want to equate debt with something moral, good or evil. .

. It is only an economic contract and this should not disturb any conscience! To resolve Greece's debt crisis, Europe is providing financial aid.

In return, it imposes a policy of draconian austerity. The country is placed under trusteeship and loses part of its sovereignty. It is under surveillance by “the Troika”, a group of three people delegated by the European Commission, the Central Bank and the IMF.

Other Eurozone countries, also over-indebted, are controlled by the Troika and subjected to austerity programs. We do n’t want to pay! PIGS, Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain.

Pigs ! This is how the inhabitants of these countries feel considered by the rest of Europe. Here in Spain, half of young people are unemployed.

And the public debt is about to reach 100% of GDP. IF YOUR GOVERNMENT FALLS UP, HONK! Out !

Out ! The echo of these protests resonates all the way to Brussels. The Troika has become the black beast!

So much so that the European Parliament is organizing an extraordinary session on its action. National parliamentarians are calling on European officials. I would like to ask some questions and hope for answers!

They address the commission and the Council: Are you satisfied with the results of the program you imposed on Greece, triggering a terrible recession, enormous unemployment and a serious humanitarian crisis? Why did you wait 4 years to realize that the Troika in Greece has no democratic legitimacy or democratic control? Why do you postpone everything until later, to a later date, the question of debt?

As far as I know, the Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish parliaments have voted for these programs. I don't see where the lack of democratic legitimacy lies. Rather, we must ask ourselves whether these programs have been successful.

It's not the same thing. Have these programs achieved the goals we envisioned? Here, we can raise doubts.

I am absolutely certain that if the Greeks had not implemented  the adjustment program, the situation in Greece would be much worse today, I am convinced. …So, to hear that the Troika program was successful, I say no! There is no success for populations who find themselves in poverty, who are poorer than they were years ago.

The European Parliament must understand the origins of these deficits and must not govern against the interests of citizens. Without solidarity with the periphery of Europe, Europe will not save its currency. Europe will not save its currency.

Neither its economy nor its society. She will simply lose sight of her project. THANKS.

Europe disappoints. The austerity programs were poorly carried out and poorly explained. Europe appears like an evil monster that threatens people in difficulty.

Throughout Europe we are witnessing the rise of nationalist parties. Anti-finance and Eurosceptic parties are gaining ground. The new golden dawn of Hellenism is dawning.

The time has come for those who betray their homeland to be afraid. We are coming! We must free Europe from the monster of Brussels.

We want to be masters of our own home! We're going to see a backlash against liberal finance, like in the 1920s, it's going to be awful. It’s already awful in Greece, awful in France.

There are many countries where people say to themselves: if the State does not take care of my interests, if it does not arrange for there to be work for my young people, then it takes a man strong to do so, to ensure my safety and the security of my children’s employment. And I don’t care what kind of “strong man” he is. If he’s a fascist, I don’t care.

If he ensures my stability, and that of my family, I will vote for him. I believe that this is what is going to happen, and I do not believe that our leaders really perceive the threat that is in front of us. So what are the solutions?

How can we slow down this debt machine? What mechanisms can we act on? Why not play on inflation like other countries do?

The United States has never paid off its debt, ever, so why isn't it paying off its debt? Quite simply because the day we tell them you have to repay us what we lent you, they lower the dollar, they make the dollar fall. And so, you lent them 100, they tell you, well, I'll pay you back 50, but it's the same thing because in the meantime, the dollar has been cut in half.

I'm caricatured, but that's a bit like how Americans work. We should almost advise the euro zone to be a bit like the Americans, that is to say to use the exchange rate to make a little, to give a little flexibility, to the capacity to repay its debt . After the Second World War, the debts of France and Germany were two to three times higher than today, but inflation will literally absorb these debts.

This solution is not completely abandoned. . .

except that in Europe it is no longer practicable because of the euro system which prohibits this type of currency depreciation between countries since the euro is the single currency. By joining the euro zone, a state gives up the right to mint money, as they used to say in the old days. Abandoning this tool means giving up a tool that is potentially useful and above all tying up one's hands, in situations where it would be necessary for them not to be tied up.

+ illustration We Germans are used to exporting with a strong currency, the Deutsche Mark. And we succeeded. So other countries can also succeed.

And this is why monetary policy cannot be about weakening the euro against other currencies, but rather about making efforts to be competitive, because a strong euro means that people's savings actually have value : the role of politics is not to impoverish people. “Tilt the bill to see the hologram and the emerald number, take a closer look! The euro, our currency!

» A strong euro benefits the countries of Northern Europe but penalizes the economies of the Southern countries. . .

Will Europe fall apart? Can we hope for possible growth that would reverse the movement? You have to be crazy, blind and deaf to believe that growth is going to be there, I mean, we see that we have to put more and more debt into the engine in fact, for growth to return, it This is what we have been doing for the last 30 years.

To have a growth which on average over the last 30 years was 2 per cent we had to go into debt more and more, so imagining that with growth we are going to reduce the debt in fact it is the opposite for to have growth we will have to go into even more debt, so it doesn't work. I think it's over there. .

. I think it's quite simple what needs to be done. .

. We see what needs to be done, we know what needs to be done. .

. We need to return to the Treaty of Maastricht, after all since we signed this treaty. Well then it's not complicated, to return to the Maastricht Treaty it is necessary that the debt beyond 60 percent be restructured, at least that it becomes collective, that is to say that for the Portuguese, for the Greeks, for the French, for the Germans themselves, everything that is beyond 60 percent is the common pot, it is all of Europe which guarantees this debt so the markets are leaving us alone, it It's over now and people will be able to start breathing again.

And why not! United for better and worse! Debts of all European countries, unite!

In a monetary union, the most productive regions – or rather, in the case of the Eurozone the most productive countries – become even more productive and richer, while the less productive regions become even poorer. Southern Italy was in the process of industrializing, until the unification of the country, around 1870. After unification, if you were an Italian investor, why continue to invest in the South when you could do more profit by investing in Milan and Northern Italy ?

The South therefore became increasingly poor, and the Italians had to do what they continue to do now: send regularly money to the South ; not lend but give money. At the time, the great “Casa del Mezzogiorno”, the Fund for Southern Italy, sent tens of billions of dollars over more than a century; it was endless. The richest provinces must send money to the poorer provinces .

Not lend money, but give. An attractive idea! But unfortunately according to the Maastricht Treaty, each country must shoulder its own debt alone.

Europe is far from being a united union. And yet. .

. for the first time in 2012, the head of the European Central Bank will assume political responsibility within the euro zone. The Euro is irreversible.

We will do everything possible, whatever the cost, within the framework of our mandate, to have a common monetary policy in the euro zone to maintain price stability and save the euro. In the fall of 2012, the Eurozone almost no longer existed. And there Mario Drghi will make THE right decision.

He will say “Listen: there is no possibility of dissociating or discriminating between the countries of the euro zone. I, head of the European Central Bank, will ensure all countries in the euro zone, whatever their situation, receive maximum funding so that they can remain in the euro zone. In my eyes, as head of the European Central Bank, there is no difference between Italy, Spain, France, Germany.

Everyone is entitled to the same interest rates. And if you, the financial markets, are not capable of giving this interest rate, well, I, as the European Central Bank, will give it to these countries. ” And at that moment, due to the firepower of the European Central Bank when he made this announcement, the financial markets collapsed.

They know that they have lost, that the strongest in history is the European Central Bank because it is - for the first time in fact - ready to create money if necessary to deal with equality for all eurozone countries. But in the meantime, couldn’t we simply erase the debt? I think a general cancellation of debts would be a good thing.

. . There are many precedents in history and recently ultra conservative regimes like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and perhaps Bahrain have done so, in secret, to avoid social unrest.

And that’s the first thing they did during the Arab Spring… Current German prosperity is based on canceling post-war debts and it’s funny how Germany is so reluctant to renegotiate the debts of countries like Greece, considered “culprits”, while its own debts were all canceled after the Second World War. It is this freedom that enabled the German economic boom. Who has benefited from the debt economy over the past 30 years?

Heritage since in fact the debt is such that the interest goes to those who lend and those who lend are those who have, that is to say, the heritage. Today Europeans have an accumulated global heritage of sixty thousand billion euros. This is the size of the nest egg on which Europeans are sitting.

Small detail is that one per 100 of Europeans own 25 per cent of this hoard, 10 per cent of Europeans, the richest 10 per cent , own 60 per cent of this hoard, and, rest assured for them, every year, thanks to the debt they get richer because obviously it is they who receive the principal and interest. And so logic would dictate that the problem of financial debt be resolved, in any case as regards its public component, the public debt, be resolved by a tax on wealth, it is even the IMF which says so, and therefore let us finally undergo an exceptional crisis levy on those who ultimately benefited from the crazy years of debt, in other words let's take from their right pocket enough to repay them in the left pockets, that is to say it This is another way to cancel debt. The disadvantage is that it is difficult to do alone, at least for small countries, so let’s take the case of Greece.

Greece is being asked today to make its wealthy taxpayers pay more taxes, which is a good idea, because the Greek tax system is not wonderful, there are wealthy taxpayers in Greece who often do not don't pay a lot of taxes; the only problem is that if we ask Greece alone to do that, it has a lot of trouble, because all it takes is for a rich Greek to click on a button to send his financial portfolio, typically to a French bank or in a German bank, so if we leave Greece alone to try to have a fair and efficient tax system , it will not succeed, if we do not have at the same time very strong fiscal coordination, with transmissions automatic banking information allowing us to know who owns what, where, at least in the Eurozone. Europe has long remained powerless in the face of tax evasion. Today she is finally taking action and imposing transparency.

The champions of banking secrecy, Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg, have given their agreement. Finance is a servant, must be a servant, but must in no case be the master. .

. Finance is a means but is not the objective. Basically we should see economists like accountants, like dentists, eh, it's not the dentists who are going to decide the future of the nation and they are great people, especially when you have a toothache, but well from there, we are going to ask them to be technicians, we are not asking them to be ideologues… That is to say, we have built a morality around the economy, which is a morality extremely, extremely hard, very hard, it's a very difficult morality to live by, life is very violent with capitalism, it's very, very violent even if it's not, even if we don't cut each other's throats in the corners of streets, but that means that we are preparing for perpetual suffering, people, it’s you must, you must, you are in guilt.

You are in debt, you are in duty, it is the economists who created this type of society. Today debt, economics and finance invade our minds. We are all caught in this debt machine.

Debt, its influence, and its dictates, have insinuated itself into our relationships with others and into our lives. But it is not life. .

. and we must learn to free ourselves from it.