Opinion Sur
European countries are going through a huge systemic crisis. Many of its players were taken by surprise; others foresaw the crisis and adopted very different attitudes: there were those who tried to warn others about the hurricane that was on its way while others plunged to make profit like crazy taking advantage of the vast speculative spaces that kept opening.
There is a lot to work out and understand about the genesis of this crisis. We can remain analysing the impact that fiscal deficits and public and private over-indebtedness –very serious and obvious problems- cause. However, there is no doubt that they did not appear out of nothing. There have been very deep processes, and factors that determined those processes, which led to the deficits and widespread over-indebtedness. Thus, the European challenge and response cannot be just to contain the haemorrhage of fiscal and financial imbalances but rather, and at the same time, act so as to remove the causes; now, in the heat of the moment, in the course of the crisis, before the magma crystallizes again (suffice it to observe the experience of the US colossal bailout which postponed critical changes for when “the hurricane was over” and, as a consequence, at present is faced with the tremendous resistance of the very players that when the crisis burst begged for help in exchange for giving whatever was necessary in order to survive).
If the European countries that are in deepest trouble and the European Union as a whole made the draconian adjustment they are starting to implement only to return to what they were before this crisis, they would produce a double disaster.
(i) In their hurry to close the negative flows, there is the risk (almost the certainty) of choosing the road of less resistance, punishing once again the most vulnerable, those who can defend themselves least. The reverse of this is that those who led the process and who made profit tooth and nail during the period that preceded the crisis will manage to transfer a good deal -if not the whole- of their share of responsibility to the rest. Huge spaces for fulminating speculation will open and there will be an immense asset and income transfer towards the speculators whose capital is not affected by the adjustment and who find themselves with free hands and easy victims to proceed. As a result, there will be a vast systemic backward step with greater acceleration of the economic concentration and social inequality process.
(ii) At the same time, by not focusing on transforming the deep causes (structural and of functioning) that led to the crisis, European countries would remain without transforming the underlying economic and social dynamics, and this will cause to reproduce, sooner or later, conditions similar to the ones that provoked the implosion they intend to control.
Let us put it bluntly: there is not one single kind of adjustment and each one is different from the other. If the type of adjustment chosen did not imply, from a start, a deep transformation of the course and way of functioning of the European Union and the countries that conform it, the painful cost they will have to pay will disproportionately punish the mid and low income sectors of the social pyramid and productive apparatus. Meanwhile, unregulated large capitals will make loads of profit at the expense of the rest. Ideas or better strategies are not missing: they exist and the very Europeans are those in charge of choosing those that serve them best; yet the nature of the crisis, the experience of other regions and the suffering of our people claim that the solutions that are finally adopted be, from the very beginning, carriers of transformation.
Opinión Sur has worked in articles and books our perspective on the genesis of the global crisis and on possible exit strategies ( [STORM: The ways of the crisis and the ways out of it->http://opinionsur.org.ar/STORM-THE-WAYS-OF-THE-CRISIS-AND] DE JUAN EUGENIO Y [Adjusting the course->http://opinionsur.org.ar/INTRODUCTORY-OFFER-Adjusting-the] DE ROBERTO SANSÓN MIZRAHI ); we continue doing so in this and coming issues.
Cordial greetings,
The Editors
