In the 19th century Karl Marx thought capital

In Egyptology, the mummies take vengeance of those who violate their burial by killing. In economics, stocks take vengeance of those who forget their existence by poisoning. This time, the revenge is spectacular. The financial hurricane which blows on the planet for more than a year is the measure of our ignorance of the stock of debts and risks.

The founding fathers of the economy were interested in stocks. In the 18th century, Adam Smith wrote about the wealth of nations. In the 19th century, Karl Marx thought capital. The classical definition of Economics places scarce across unlimited needs. But, at the beginning of the 20th, the market has become the heart of the economic thinking. And the market works better with products available in unlimited quantities. The angle of view narrowed. The attention is moved from stocks to flows, consumption, income, production. In so doing, it has accumulated mountains of debts without realizing that they could crumble. Hence the great depression. Hence the break of the link between the dollar and gold in 1971 followed by an oil crisis and a recession.

The men indefinitely repeated the same mistakes. At the end of the 1990s, industrial hypnotized by the promises of the new economy of the Internet have forgotten debt stocks which fell them on it. At the beginning of the 21st, two categories of actors have again ignored their debt. Individuals, to purchase dwellings which were always argued more expensive tomorrow. And the bankers, who were thought to get rid of their debts by aggregating and then in labelling for resale markets. In their income, the margin on loan stock gradually gave way to commissions for provision of services, flows. New York houses went even further. To clear a profitability without precedent, they built spirals of debt they also unprecedented. Of course, they had placed across stocks of assets. But there is a difference between the assets and debt: the value of each can fades while the other remains due until or bankruptcy.

Over-indebtedness, monstrous deficits or borrowing stock, is always the starting point of the great depression. As described in the Economist Irving Fisher in a famous article in 1933 ("The debt-both theory of great depressions", revue "econometrica"), it leads logically to the liquidation of the assets by the debt-burdened actors, resulting in sales price broken causing a decrease in prices and the bankruptcy cascade. Follows the fall of profits, production, trade, employment... Revenge of the stocks is terrible.

In this revenge, all means are good to avoid deflation, this downward spiral of a decline in general price freezes economic activity. Farewell, calf, cow, pig, couvée Maastricht: we live in exceptional circumstances. Attention, however, do not forget other stocks in the battle. The most obvious, which grows at sight of eye at this time, it is public debt. This increase is inevitable. However, when good times return, need to reduce it as did most of European countries in recent years, in contrast to the France, which increased his own. Revenge of the public debt too often pushed the country in crisis, the failure of Law in 1720 to devaluations repetition of the years 1970-1980 through the failure of the assignat in 1796 or the wall of money in 1926.

Beyond, another stock likely to be overshadowed by the crisis. We have forgotten him and he may not become too heavy, but conversely, disappear. It is our natural stock of oil, fish, climate equilibrium. Of course, we are here in a world where certainties are less assured. No one knows the precise impact of human activity on global warming of the planet, or the available quantities of black gold in the bowels of the Earth. But there are certainly threats and prospects for exhaustion. If the revenge of these stocks will come later, it will be even more terrible. It may even be fatal.