The Limited Times

Bertille Bayart: "The ghost of the 2008 crisis and its lessons"

3/3/2020, 8:24:17 PM


CHRONICLE - The crisis of 2008, by the contamination of all the bank balance sheets of the planet, looked like a financial pandemic. The comparison with what is happening today stops at this similarity of the vocabulary used.

The World Health Organization (WHO) does not, or not yet, speak of a pandemic. France is not, or not yet, in stage 3 of the epidemic. But from an economic point of view, the level of alert has obviously gone up a notch.

The Fed struck a blow Tuesday by cutting interest rates by 0.5 points. The president of the American Central Bank had warned, as of Friday, in a statement as succinct as rare, that he stood ready to "support the economy" .

Read also: The global economy under the shock of the coronavirus

In the space of a few days, if not a few hours, all that the planet has of influential voices has spoken. A deluge of press releases to drown concern. A general mobilization to avoid panic. The G7, which met urgently on Tuesday, promised to "use all the appropriate instruments" . European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put "all the tools at her disposal" on Monday. The famous “whatever it takes” - all that will be needed - pronounced in 2012 by Mario

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