What We Must Learn from America

Hurricane Sandy has shown the solidarity that Americans are capable of despite their political rifts. This stands as a lesson for a divided Europe in which countries have withdrawn into their own national interests and shown themselves incapable of finding common and sustainable solutions to the economic crisis.

“Spirit of America”: Such is the name of the ferry to Staten Island, where Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc 15 days ago. The scene on the ground is terrifying: roofs and houses blown off or sunken. Entire neighborhoods destroyed. Around New York, hundreds of thousands of people are still without water or electricity. The storm caused 120 deaths. The damage is estimated at $50 billion… for the moment.

On Staten Island, as on Rockaway, Coney Island and Redhook, hundreds of volunteers bustle about. They come with their families to bring food and blankets or to provide a means of transportation for those who can no longer live in their devastated homes. Americans put aside their discord and resentment, which is still strong in this country with multiple political fractures, both ethnic and social, after the labored re-election of Barack Obama. The Occupy Wall Street movement has set aside its fight to launch “Occupy Sandy,” a movement that organizes aid for the most devastated sites in the region. Facing the economic crisis for four years, as in the face of this hurricane, Americans unite and refuse to submit. All’s fair in love and war; when survival is at stake any means are acceptable. If $30 billion is required to repair the destruction caused by Sandy, as requested by the governor of New York, Mario Cuomo*, there will be an additional $30 billion printed by the Fed. The debt, which is growing every year by more than a trillion dollars ($1.3 trillion in 2011), will soon reach 100 percent of U.S. GDP. But too bad. The emergency lies elsewhere: It is in the fight against unemployment.

Three years ago, the U.S. economy was destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. In the last ten months, it created 1.6 million. In 2013 there will probably be even more, as the predicted fall of corporate taxes and investment in the research and exploration of oil and shale gas will give America independence and a critical competitive edge in energy. A recent report from the International Energy Agency estimates that America may even produce more oil than Saudi Arabia by 2020.

What are we, the French and Europeans, doing now to confront past and future crises? We choose to do the opposite of America in almost every field: disunity between and within each country; higher taxes for businesses, especially those that have the poor taste to be a large enterprise and continue to keep their headquarters in France. Shale gas? France applies the principal of precaution — the hardcore version: Don’t undertake anything that would risk creating tens of thousands of jobs, give us leadership in clean extraction technology and lower the energy bills of households as well as companies.

Create capital for financing a policy of major pan-European work, reduce the value of the euro, boost our exports and reduce the effects of a relentless fiscal discipline? The governors of the ECB [European Central Bank], with the consent of a European technocracy disconnected from reality (far from the everyday 25 million unemployed Europeans), prefer their antiquated theological positions on the matter. The principal of precaution triumphs at the expense of the principal of reality — at the expense of people and businesses.

Roll up our sleeves, unite in the face of adversity and find common solutions in different countries, in different economic and social categories? We prefer to strike and reject challenge as well as change. We are strictly concerned with our own national agenda (read: departmental).

However, with an economic crisis that will be long and intense, an ill wind is rising today, one that threatens to take much more than houses: the rise of nationalism and tribalism from east to west, north to south. The spirit of parochialism as well as the spirit of fortification is beginning to withdraw into itself, well sheltered behind borders, be it those of a country or a neighborhood.

If this column now has a weekly goal, it is this: to shed light on a changing world, to promote European unity and its economic and social dynamics, even though European economies and societies are dangerously locked and withdraw into themselves.

To achieve this, this author promises to adhere to at least one principle — the principle of hazard — and to adhere as well to a state of mind — entrepreneurship — for lack of the “Spirit of America.” Until next Wednesday.

* Editor’s Note: The current governor of New York is Andrew Cuomo. Mario Cuomo is his father, who served as governor from 1983 to 1994.