Je vous invite à réflêchir sur ce texte de Charles Gave;

En voici non pas l’essentiel car il est très riche, mais ce que je pense devoir en retenir.

Charles met en cause les élites européennes: elles ont failli à leur mission elles ne se sont pas montré capables conduire ou gérer les changements nécessaires à l’adaptation aux défis qui se posent à l’ensemble européen.

Cet échec est maintenant patent, évident et il est de plus en plus souvent reconnu, ainsi cela été reconnu par le Brinannique Mervyn King et plus récemment par le FMI. 

La rivalité séculaire entre la France et l’Allemagne a conduit à trois guerres et les élites ont voulu tenter de dépasser cette rivalité par l’intégration politique. Cette intégration n’a pas donné les résultats escomptés, elle a été incapble de  résoudre les problèmes fondamentaux qui se posaient . Les élites le savent, mais elles refusent de faire machine arrière par attachement émotionnel par exemple. Il faut dire qu’elles semblent plus préoccupées de leurs intérêts particulier de caste (ou de classe) que du bien commun. Un processus est en cours qui ruine la crédibilité de ces élites qu’il s’agisse du FMI, de la Commission Européenne ou de la BCE.

Leurs solutions dépassées conduisent l’Europe à la ruine économique, ce dont les citoyens souffrent. Ces gens ont perdu toute légitimité et ils se conduisent maintenant comme une véritable mafia. Traditionnellement les peuples peuvent s’en debarasser soit par des élections, soit par une révolution. Les Britanniques ont réussi à le faire par des élections. Hélas le système européen a été conçcu cyniquement pour protéger les élites mafieuses et , ainsi, elles ne peuvent etre chassées démocrfatiquement.

Charles ne va pas jusqu’à dire que nous allons vers la Révolution pour chasser ces mafieux, mais… Moi en tous cas je crains que cela soit inévitable, car dans l’ambiance et les orientations actuelles, je ne vois pas  les processus démocratiques l’emporter dans nos sociétés, ce qui va les polariser et cliver encore plus, les conduisant à des affrontements de moins en  moins pacifiques.

Charles saute directement à l’économique, abandonnant le politique, mais notre conseil est, au contraire de bien rester sur le politique et le social car « c’est là que cela se passe », l’économique étant ce qui va continuer de produire un politique violent, un politique de dislocation. Voire de guerre civile plus ou moins ouverte.

Le maillon faible de la chaine européenne, c’est l’Italie, c’est donc elle qu’il faut suivre et surveiller comme le lait sur le feu.

C’est d’ailleurs ce que je fais sur  ce service depuis de nombreux mois car je suis persuadé que Charles a raison. Même si les élites ploutocrates  italiennes ont réussi un coup de génie en créant « Cinq Etoiles » qui est une mystification destinée à canaliser et  à orienter les rebellions au profit des intérêts non pas populaires, mais dominants. Les élites italiennes sont intelligentes et cultivées, bien plus que les Françaises et elles lisent, elles ont eu l’expérience de la lutte anti communiste, elles connaissent leur Gramsci et les grands stratèges de la vie sociale. Avec « Cinq Etoiles » Elles ont un fer au feu.  En plus ces élites italiennes sont plus productivistes, moins financiarisées que leurs consoeurs européennes et mondiales, leur sentiment de solidarité est loin d’être fort, elles ont une forte dose de marginalité. 

Charles pense à juste titre que la mauvaise monnaie chasse la bonne dans le cadre d’une loi de Gresham révisée et modernisée: les économies et le capital fuient vers l’étranger, Allemagne, Londres, New York, ce qui va finir par provoquer une crise bancaire en Italie et dans les pays victimes des sorties  de capitaux et une pression forte sur la masse monétaire Allemande. Si le dollar et la Livre commencent à monter sensiblement face à l’euro, ce sera un signal, il sera temps d’être vigilant et de retenir son souffle.

Nous en sommes aux premiers frémissements. 

 

Toynbee’s Europe

By Charles Gave, Chairman, Gavekal
August 3, 2016

In A Study of History the great Arnold Toynbee explained that the role of “elites” in any society is to handle challenges that allow the group to survive and move on to the next phase of their shared journey. If bad solutions are offered up then problems will intensify and pressure will arise for a change in the elite. This can happen in various ways: through elections in a best case scenario, a change of regime as with France’s forth Republic which failed to properly handle decolonization, a collapse in the political structure such as befell the Austrian empire at the end of WWI, or, most dramatically, the overthrow of a civilization as in South America with the arrival of the Spaniards or in Egypt when the Muslims took over.

In Europe, the main problem for a century or more was the internecine rivalry between Germany and France which led to three wars that became progressively more destructive. By the time Europe’s exhausted elites reached 1945, it was obvious that war was not going to solve anything and hence a new solution was tried in the shape of “political” Europe. The plan worked to such an extent that new challenges were spawned such as the handling of Germany’s reunification, managing the effects of an aging population and integrating lots of immigrants from a genuinely different civilization.

New problems, old solutions

These new challenges required new solutions, and yet the elites responded with solutions used to handle the previous challenge, with the forced integration of Europe into a single political and economic construct. Unsurprisingly, the old solutions have not worked and indeed their application is making Europe’s various problems worse. The interesting thing is that members of the elite are starting to openly admit this:

• Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, wrote in his recent bookThe End of Alchemy that European leaders pushed for the adoption of the euro as a single currency knowing that it would cause an economic disaster in Southern Europe. The idea was that the impact of weakened economies would force national politicians to accept “reforms” imposed by Brussels. Put simply, Lord King argues that these elites consciously organized a huge decline in living standards in the expectation that it would undermine the legitimacy of local politicians. The problem is that most regular people (rightly) believe that their state is the best guarantor of their society being able to “live together”, which is the basic contract binding a nation.
• Last week the International Monetary Fund’s independent watchdog offered a scathing assessment of the agency’s handling of the eurozone crisis with the allegation that staffers willfully ignored fatal flaws in the euro project due to an emotional attachment. It became a totem of IMF thinking that in a common payment area, there could not be a solvency crisis. Moreover, the “solutions” imposed on Greece hurt the most vulnerable part of society, causing a collapse in living standards. In an indictment of the IMF’s competence, its assessments (forecasts) about the impact its policies would have on the Greek economy were shown to border on the ridiculous. To boot, the processes followed by IMF staff were shown to be unprofessional with decisions being taken without proper discussion and documentation.

Our “experts” (the brilliant men of Davos) have thus been shown to protect their own particular tribal interests, rather than the common good. These testimonies are part of an revelatory exercise in Europe which must accelerate a collapse in the legitimacy of both know-better technocrats and the trans-national institutions, which have been all over the European project since 2011 with such deleterious effects. As such, not only the IMF but the European Commission and the European Central Bank have all seen their credibility decimated.

The really worrying thing with these demonstrably incompetent institutions is their continued power grab without any proper authority. Such hubris has seen them break pretty much every agreed rule of national economic management that existed prior to the crisis (it seems a quaint detail now that the ECB was not supposed to buy government bonds) in a bid to sustain a project which is manifestly pushing European economies toward a disaster. So where does this leave us?

Historically, when an unelected “mafia” has seized control of the political domain, the two remedial options available to the citizenry have been elections, and failing that a revolution. As usual, the British moved first— through an election (England’s last revolution was in 1688). The Brits’ decision to break free should not have been that surprising, given that in the normal course of events the EU system had been rigged to stop the genius “elites” from being fired democratically.

Yet for all the significance of the Brexit vote, the UK is not part of the eurozone and so could leave without dooming the system. Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal and Finland, by contrast, are subjected to that straitjacket. And getting out of the euro implies exiting the EU. For this reason, the next exit (Italy looks like a prime candidate) is going to be far more momentous, with very clear investment implications.

The savings of the problematic countries will likely move to Frankfurt (in expectation of the deutschemark coming back), London or New York on the basis of a slightly revised Gresham’s law that bad currency will chase out the good ones. The result will be a big rise in German M1 and a banking crisis in the weak countries, with banks being bled dry of their deposits. The value of the pound and the US dollar can be expected to appreciate. Since it appears that Europe’s banking crisis is already under way, my advice would be to watch these variables very closely. If the pound and the dollar start to rise against the euro, it will probably mean that German M1 is rocketing upwards. And at that point the advice would be to adopt the brace position.