Dettes souveraines : limites du traitement keynesien d'une crise structurelle

Résumé 0

The Crisis of Sovereign Debts: The Limits of the Keynesian Treatment of a Structural CrisisWhy were several years of stimulation of demand by very large fiscal deficits not sufficient to allow the economies of the old centres (the United States and Europe) to recover their autonomous capability to grow? From this lack of capability results the contradictory character of the present situation. On the one hand, the deficits are still required in order to maintain the general level of activity; on the other hand, the unbounded growth of government debts seems impossible to prolong. This impasse manifests the “structural character” of the crisis, one of the large phases of perturbation that, every thirty or forty years, punctuate the history of capitalism and compel it to transform itself in fundamental respects, into what we denote as new “social orders”. The resolution of the circumstances of the present crisis requires much more than macro policies. Involved are economic institutions, the management of enterprises, the function of the financial sector, industrial policies and international relations. The crisis highlights the negative impact of neoliberal practices, leading to the deindustrialization of the economies of the centre, establishing a new configuration of growth around the globe. Leaving aside certain obvious singularities, the peripheries are now growing more rapidly than the centre.