Crise 2008 par etapes

2008 crisis

1st Step

First step:

 in 2007, American households, whose incomes are stagnating, particularly as a result of international competition, are unable to repay real estate loans granted without any guarantee by banks seized of drunkenness. Since the bursting of the "Internet bubble" in 2000, the US Federal Reserve has kept interest rates very low, encouraging investors to be more adventurous.

2nd step

Second stage: in September 2008, the subprime crisis turned into a banking crisis, with the balance sheets of financial institutions filled with insolvent real estate loans broken down around the world into sophisticated financial products. Lehman Brothers falls; panic wins; banks stop granting credit: the economy is on the verge of suffocation.

3rd Step

Third step: rather than placing an entire failed financial sector under public control, governments agree to bail it out as it stands. States are going into disproportionate debt to save banks and revive the economy. But after twenty years of continuous tax cuts, revenues are not keeping pace. Between the end of 2008 and mid-2009, the private finance crisis turned into an inflated public debt and social crisis. In Western countries, unemployment is skyrocketing.

4th step

Fourth step. Required by the influx of public money and the rise of the stock markets, stimulated by almost zero interest rates, banks and investment funds are resuming their ordinary business. During the stock market turmoil, many shifted their assets from the equity market (perceived as uncertain) to the public debt market (deemed secure). But they swell dangerously and serve only a low interest rate. To raise it: this is the consequence of the speculative "attack" on the sovereign debt of Europe's "peripheral" countries, which began after the revelation of the make-up of Greek deficits - caramboo, carried out with the help of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

5th Step

Fifth step. As soon as the public powers refuse to stop speculation by law and by immediate aid to Greece, a vicious circle begins: borrowing to pay the debt; reducing deficits to borrow; cutting public spending to reduce deficits; lowering wages, social benefits and "reforming" pensions to reduce public spending. All these measures impoverish households, obscure economic prospects and encourage rating agencies to downgrade sovereign debt securities....

First presented to the States, the invoice sent by the banks for the price of their own imperialism then falls to its final recipient: the employees.

6th step

Step six. The collapse of the European dominoes. We are here. A mirror of European disunity, the aid plan for Greece approved on 11 April belatedly attempts to reconcile all the antagonisms: the intervention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the rescue of Community appearances; the placing under guardianship of Athens and the principle of national sovereignty; the well understood interest of French and German banks, heavily exposed to Greek debt, and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits financial solidarity with a Member State (Articles 123 and 125); the amount of loans initially planned (€45 billion, including €15 billion from the IMF) and the amounts now deemed necessary to stem speculative activity (two or even three times higher); the Rhine economic model that compresses wages to expand exports, and the negative trade balances of its neighbours; the political agenda of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing a major regional election on 9 May, and that of the leaders of the most indebted countries who see the speculative storm approaching their shores.

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