Ainsi ce jour fut-il le jour de la Fin des Temps

Les commentaires de plus en plus affirmatifs se multiplient désormais, pour “nous dire l’Histoire” telle que nous l’avons vue se dérouler sous nos yeux. Il s’agit précisément de ce 14 mars 2008, le jour où Bernanke mit la main à la poche pour sauver Bear Stearns et marquer la fin de l’illusion capitaliste et libre-échangiste d’un monde sans régulation, sans interventionnisme, sans chose publique pour empêcher le marché de tourner en rond, – seul, sans entrave ni interférence.

Ainsi en est-il, d’une façon assez solennelle, du prestigieux commentateur Martin Wolf, du Financial Times, dans cet article du 25 mars, qui écrit effectivement comme un historien entamant un nouveau chapitre de notre Histoire:

«Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died. For three decades we have moved towards market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the US, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over. It showed in deeds its agreement with the remark by Joseph Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, that “I no longer believe in the market’s self-healing power”. Deregulation has reached its limits.»

Observons dans ce cas, et saluons l’honnêteté du commentateur, ce qui n’est pas le cas de tous. Car Martin Wolf est, ou fut un “free-market believer”; et il nous le dit sans barguigner, comme il nous dit cette défaite fondamentale de la Foi: “Il était une fois un commentateur qui croyait que le temps viendrait… où les gouvernement n’auraient plus à intervenir. C’était s’abuser soi-même.” («Once upon a time, I had hoped that securitisation would shift a substantial part of the risk-bearing outside the regulated banking system, where governments would no longer need to intervene. That has proved a delusion.»)

«The lobbies of Wall Street will, it is true, resist onerous regulation of capital requirements or liquidity, after this crisis is over. They may succeed. But, intellectually, their position is now untenable. Systemically important institutions must pay for any official protection they receive. Their ability to enjoy the upside on the risks they run, while shifting parts of the downside on to society at large, must be restricted. This is not just a matter of simple justice (although it is that, too). It is also a matter of efficiency. An unregulated, but subsidised, casino will not allocate resources well. Moreover, that subsidisation does not now apply only to shareholders, but to all creditors. Its effect is to make the costs of funds unreasonably cheap. These grossly misaligned incentives must be tackled.

»I greatly regret the fact that the Fed thought it necessary to take this step. Once upon a time, I had hoped that securitisation would shift a substantial part of the risk-bearing outside the regulated banking system, where governments would no longer need to intervene. That has proved a delusion. A vast amount of risky, if not downright fraudulent, lending, promoted by equally risky finance, has made securitised markets highly risky. This has damaged institutions, notably Bear Stearns, that operated intensively in these markets.»

Ainsi donc sommes-nous dans ces temps historiques où les choses changent, où les croyances s’effondrent, où la Fin des Temps qu’on nous promettait joyeuse et complètement libre-échangiste se transforme en une perspective incertaine, extraordinaire et absolument historique, où tous les fondements de notre Croyance sont ébranlés au point où il faut songer à mettre notre Croyance en procès. Certes, ce n’est pas le Tibet, qui nous tourmente tous, vous et moi, qui fait l’unanime exclamation vertueuse de nos JT à grande audience, qui anime nos belles consciences des beaux quartiers et nos agitateurs droit-de-l’hommistes en général bien appointés, – mais cela vaut réflexion. C’est tout simplement, nous dit Martin Wolf, l’Histoire en train de se faire, disons la différence entre la substance et l'accident.

«“Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.” Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff recently quoted Robert Frost’s words in describing the dangers of financial ruin (fire) and inflation (ice) confronting us. These are perilous times. They are also historic times. The US is showing the limits of deregulation. Managing this unavoidable shift, without throwing away what has been gained in the past three decades, is a huge challenge. So is getting through the deleveraging ahead in anything like one piece. But we must start in the right place, by recognising that even the recent past is a foreign country.»

Mis en ligne le 26 mars 2008 à 04H52