The Words of the Crisis

Ever since the subprime crisis, when those acrobatic mortgage funds burst in the United States in 2007, each passing month, each day, has seen longer, more accentuated tremors that rattle the world’s economy. To the financial workers, the shock waves have made a part of the American Banking system collapse onto itself and now puts in danger the “true” economy, production, consumer confidence, and employment.

In the U.S. first-but now bouncing around every country, it’s the dreadful crisis of overall confidence that is the menace; it testifies to people’s doubts and skepticism that provoked the giant banking bail out the government recently announced. Who could check such suspicion? At this stage, certainly not the principal economic actors. And even less so the financiers who have not known nor measured nor controlled the folly of the markets to which they have not lent a hand.

And so stay the factotums in public life with their political responsibilities. Decried and with most of them suspected of being no more than rhetoricians without power, they find themselves with the opportunity to demonstrate their usefulness. But the risks are evident. If they say nothing, their silence will be judged shameful. If they speak, doubt will enter immediately; what grasp do they truly have of the crisis. George Bush came to deliver in a tone that was alarmist and dramatic, but without being afraid to say, “a long and painful recession.”

Relatively speaking, the challenge is the same for Nicolas Sarkozy, who had to explain himself to Toulon on Sept. 25. He found the words to avoid the anxiety turning into “panic” (so says George Bush), but without leaving the French believing that the crisis is under control since for the moment, nothing affirms that it is.

In short, the president of the Republic must, as much as possible, reassure without boring, explain without panicking, relearn the limits of his power without raising current mistrust in the situation. In knowing what’s at stake is decisive for the three years to come, contrary to his American counterpart, he must realize he is not at the end of his mandate.