London Review of Books a publicat acum ceva timp un articol lung ÅŸi foarte interesant, al lui John Lanchester, despre criza financiară ÅŸi răspunsul guvernelor S.U.A. ÅŸi Regatului Unit. ÃŽl recomand atât ca lecÅ£ie de istorie…

During the 17th century, Scottish investors had noticed with envy the gigantic profits being made in trade with Asia and Africa by the English charter companies, especially the East India Company. They decided that they wanted a piece of the action and in 1694 set up the Company of Scotland, which in 1695 was granted a monopoly of Scottish trade with Africa, Asia and the Americas. The Company then bet its shirt on a new colony in Darien – that’s Panama to us – and lost. The resulting crash is estimated to have wiped out a quarter of the liquid assets in the country, and was a powerful force in impelling Scotland towards the 1707 Act of Union with its larger and better capitalised neighbour to the south.

cât ÅŸi ca explicaÅ£ie a unor probleme ale sistemului bancar…

The one time a big bank has been allowed to go under – Lehman’s, in September last year – it almost destroyed the global banking system, with consequences that are still being felt, and will continue to be felt for a long time. Without confident lending from banks to banks and from banks to businesses and individuals – without the proper functioning of the credit system – the global economy comes to an abrupt screeching halt. When a bank goes under, it destroys that confidence. So a big bank can’t be allowed to go under. Call that problem two. Put problem one and problem two together, and we have the current situation, in which the big banks are completely untransparent but also too big to fail. That is a catastrophic formula. We (the taxpaying we) have no choice but to keep them in business, and yet no real idea what’s going on inside them.

şi ca o sursă de concluzii interesante.

There is, however, a deeper embarrassment, one which verges on a form of psychological or ideological crisis. To nationalise major financial institutions would mean that the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism had failed. The level of state intervention in the US and UK at this moment is comparable to that of wartime. We have in effect had to declare war to get us out of the hole created by our economic system. There is no model or precedent for this, and no way to argue that it’s all right really, because under such-and-such a model of capitalism . . . there is no such model. It just isn’t supposed to work like this, and there is no road-map for what’s happened.