Le désarroi élégant de Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf est l’un des plus fins et des plus fameux commentateurs du très prestigieux Financial Times. On a déjà lu l’importance que Wolf accorde à ce 14 mars 2008, jour où la Fed décida de sauver la Bear Stearns de l’effondrement. Dans un très long rapport sur la crise dont la première partie est publié aujourd’hui sur WSWS.org, Nick Beams choisit effectivement cette date pour son introduction...

«March 14, 2008—the day it became public knowledge that Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank in the US and one of the largest financial institutions in the world, had gone bankrupt—has already taken its place as one of the defining dates in the history of global capitalism. On that day, the world changed in a fundamental way. The nostrums delivered day in day out by the various financial commentators, political leaders, academic economists and media pundits about the wonders and virtues of the “free market”—that it represented the highest, indeed the only possible form of social and economic organisation—were proven to be completely worthless.»

... Puis Beams enchaîne sur son analyse de la crise du capitalisme dont nous sommes aujourd’hui les témoins, sinon les acteurs involontaires, et plutôt dans le rôle de figurants contraints. L’un des centres d’intérêt documentaires de son analyse est qu’il cite longuement Martin Wolf, – nous y revenons, – dans une intervention qu’il fit le 7 mars dernier, quelques jours avant ce fameux et terrible 14 mars. On peut avoir ainsi une appréciation supplémentaire de ce brillant commentateur du capitalisme et du marché libre, et l’un des plus brillants défenseurs de l’un et l’autre, – citation achevé par cette remarque à la fois sibylline, tristement ironique et marquée du plus profond désarroi: «Je ne sais plus désormais ce que je m’étais accoutumé à penser que je savais. Mais je ne sais pas pour autant ce que je pense maintenant.»

«Among the more perceptive writers in the financial press there is recognition of some of the longer-term historical implications of this crisis. The chief economics writer for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, began his remarks to a recent meeting as follows:

»“For three decades now we have been promoting the joys of a liberalised financial system and what has it brought us? ‘One massive financial crisis after the other’ is the answer. This is not to say that liberalised finance brings no benefits. It has certainly made a substantial number of people extraordinarily rich.”

»He noted that since the late 1970s there had been no fewer than 117 systemic banking crises in 93 countries, half the world, and in 27 of these the fiscal cost of the bailout was 10 per cent of GDP and sometimes more. But the crisis of 2007-2008, he continued, was “far and away the most significant of all the crises of the last three decades.”

» “What makes this crisis so significant? It tests the most evolved financial system we have. It emanates from the core of the world’s most advanced financial system and from transactions entered into by the most sophisticated financial institutions, which use the cleverest tools of securitisation and rely on the most sophisticated risk management. Even so, the financial system blew up: both the commercial paper and inter-bank markets froze for months; the securitised paper turned out to be radioactive and the ratings proffered by ratings agencies to be fantasy; central banks had to pump in vast quantities of liquidity; and the panic-stricken Federal Reserve was forced to make unprecedented cuts in interest rates.”

»What will be the eventual consequences? According to Nouriel Roubini of New York University’s Stern School of Business the hit to the financial system may be as much as $3 trillion, equivalent to around 20 percent of GDP.

»Wolf summed up the perplexity gripping those supposedly in charge of the financial system.

» “I no longer know what I used to think I knew. But I also do not know what I think now.”

»Emphasising the need to learn from history, he continued: “A fundamental lesson concerns the way the financial system works. Outsiders were aware it had become a gigantic black box. But they were prepared to assume that those inside it at least knew what was going on. This can hardly be true now” (Martin Wolf, Financial Globalisation, Growth and Asset Prices, paper prepared for Colloque International de la Banque de France on Globalisation, Inflation and Monetary Policy, Paris, March 7, 2008).

»This is a rather startling admission, not from an opponent of the capitalist order and the free market, but from one of its foremost international public defenders.»

Mis en ligne le 16 avril 2008 à 13H18