Revenons-en \u00e0 notre ami Gerard Baker, du Times<\/em>, grand connaisseur de l’Am\u00e9rique, des affaires \u00e9conomiques et des vertus capitalistiques, du libre-\u00e9change et du march\u00e9 qui se d\u00e9brouille tout seul. Grand admirateur de tout cela, \u00e9galement. Baker jubile, ce 25 mars<\/a>, parce qu’il est positivement admiratif de l’action de la Fed (rachat de Bear Sterans, par JP Morgan interpos\u00e9, par filouterie interpos\u00e9e d’actions incroyablement d\u00e9valu\u00e9es et depuis r\u00e9\u00e9valu\u00e9es, et d’une ligne de cr\u00e9dit de $30 milliards de bel et bon argent du contribuable). Pour Baker, qui exulte, l’action de la Fed para\u00eet presque churchillienne. En voil\u00e0 des qui ont des cojones<\/em>, ce n’est pas comme les lavettes de la Bank of England<\/em> et de l’\u00e9quipe Brown qui ont tant h\u00e9sit\u00e9 avant de racheter la planche pourrie de Northern Rock pour quelque chose d’un peu plus de \u00a350 milliards.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tBref Allelu\u00efa pour Bernanke, le vrai American-made<\/em> donateur-en-chef de l’entreprise capitalistique et libre-\u00e9changiste.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abA few years back, at a conference to honour the 90th birthday of the great economist Milton Friedman, the keynote speech was given by Ben Bernanke, then merely a member of the board of governors of the US Federal Reserve.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbMr Bernanke, who had made something of a life’s work of studying the Great Depression and its causes, addressed the central contention in one of Professor Friedman’s analyses that the economic disaster of the 1930s was essentially the result of an unforced policy error, a terrible series of mistakes by the Federal Reserve.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbMr Bernanke’s conclusion was surprisingly blunt: You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbAt the time, the economist-turned-central banker’s observations seemed only a slightly more colourful assessment of historical events than policymakers are generally inclined to give. But five years or so later, with echoes of the 1930s apparently back in the air last week, Alan Greenspan, Mr Bernanke’s predecessor, said that this could be the worst financial crisis in more than 50 years the Fed Chairman’s promise then has taken on something of the appearance of a contractual obligation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbCertainly, the remarkable actions by Mr Bernanke and his colleagues at the Fed recently suggest that they take quite seriously the possibility that the current recession could turn into something really unpleasant and that, if disaster can be averted by policy action, at least they will not be found wanting.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe conventional Wall Street rap on Mr Bernanke is that he and his colleagues are of an academic mindset, hidebound by ivory-towered thinking, incapable of the agility needed to solve the deepening financial mess (unlike, presumably, those brilliant financial people who created the mess in the first place. In the immortal words last summer of the professionally irate Jim Cramer of CNBC: They know nothing!!!)<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tR\u00e9sultat: tout va pour le beaucoup mieux dans le meilleur des mondes capitalistes \u00abJust when everybody was expecting the Crash of 2008, US equity markets had their best week since early February. The dollar rallied. Commodity prices eased. Credit spreads narrowed sharply.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tEt pour l’avenir? Eh bien, c’est simple, il faut avant tout renforcer les digues, comme on ne fit pas \u00e0 La Nouvelle Orleans avant Katrina<\/em>, car la saison des ouragans n’est pas termin\u00e9e, c’est-\u00e0-dire: passez la monnaie, les gars, la big public money<\/em> (dito<\/em>, les $milliards des contribuables): \u00abIn the end, though, saving the financial system and the economy will require more than Fed action. Markets won’t really stabilise until there is some firm indication from the Administration and Congress that there is big public money coming down the pipeline to bail out the battered housing market. Here, the politicians are still looking less radical than the technocratic policymakers at the Fed.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tSuivez donc le raisonnement: le syst\u00e8me libre-\u00e9changiste, l’ennemi jur\u00e9 de l’interventionnisme de l’Etat, de tout ce qui est de pr\u00e8s ou de loin la chose publique, a \u00e9t\u00e9 sauv\u00e9 in extremis<\/em> par l’argent sans compter de la chose publique. Cela s’appelle nationalisation d’une fa\u00e7on<\/a> ou de l’autre<\/a> ou l’on ne s’y conna\u00eet plus, et cela sonne le glas du march\u00e9 libre et du principe central du capitalisme, comme nous le dit honn\u00eatement Martin Wolf<\/a>. Au nom de quoi, le brave Baker sonne aux armes pour que la chose publique s’appr\u00eate \u00e0 passer \u00e0 nouveau \u00e0 la caisse, et dans le style churchillien de Bernanke s’il vous pla\u00eet, sans barguigner, et \u00e0 verser beaucoup, beaucoup plus encore, pour sauver le syst\u00e8me qui ex\u00e8cre l’interventionnisme de la chose publique, et lui permettre de continuer \u00e0 vivre et \u00e0 vitup\u00e9rer la chose publique, pour que les commentateurs continuent \u00e0 affirmer que la chose publique est ex\u00e9crable et que le syst\u00e8me libre-\u00e9changiste est plus que jamais la recette du monde meilleur.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 26 mars 2008 \u00e0 05H02<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Revenons-en \u00e0 notre ami Gerard Baker, du Times, grand connaisseur de l’Am\u00e9rique, des affaires \u00e9conomiques et des vertus capitalistiques, du libre-\u00e9change et du march\u00e9 qui se d\u00e9brouille tout seul. Grand admirateur de tout cela, \u00e9galement. Baker jubile, ce 25 mars, parce qu’il est positivement admiratif de l’action de la Fed (rachat de Bear Sterans, par… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4094,6936,3557,3715,7490],"class_list":["post-69784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-baker","tag-bernanke","tag-libre-echange","tag-marche","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}