Barack Obama discernible glimmers of hope

Recognize them extenuating circumstances: economists are not easy to anticipate in the coming months. Complex, technical, world, the crisis has surprised and surprise again. For observers, a way to get an idea is to look at the balance between pessimists and optimists.

Pessimists had contrary wind until August 2007. Nouriel Roubini, Kenneth Rogoff, or Stephen Roach, accompanied by the two Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, had ceased, for several years, to alert on global growth imbalances: the United States is consuming too much, the China not enough. But as the crisis announced they did not come, their cries were covered by persistent winds of growth. Everything reversed in August 2007, the sub-prime crisis gives them reason and their opinions are on the first page of the newspapers. The pessimists outweigh and subsequently gives them reason: the world sinks into the worst crisis since 1929. The optimists have more rating.

Since a few weeks, the direction of the wind is reverse again in their favour. Stimulus plans and bailouts of banks are beginning to take their effect. Positive signs are left guessing an end of the recession in the second half. The judgment of the productions was so brutal six months ( 20 in the euro area) that stocks are empty, you will have to restart the plant: this is the general pattern. The OECD already denotes "a pause" in the recession in China, France, in the UK, Italy. Jean-Claude Trichet spoke of "inflection". Search the trust policy loupent no green signal. Barack Obama discernible "glimmers of hope." Christine Lagarde is betting on "a gradual recovery."

This fall is now fairly well confirmed that the risk of a "great depression" type 1929 is excluded and that optimists found life. The issue is obviously what will be the strength of this recovery. No one believes that it will be great (in the form of V), but the two camps are found front against front: optimists believe that it will be u, the Cassandras speak of L, the end of the fall meaning no rebooting. The debate is instructive because it is economical but it is also clearly political: pessimists argue that Governments of not doing enough, reluctant to be radically interventionist.

They believe that the growth of yesterday had a disorder of excessive debt made possible by the profusion of new financial tools. It certainly in the short term to allow banks to lend again, but must be above all, in parallel, the problem of too much debt and find a path of growth less influenced by the finance.

For the pessimists, there is in the opposite direction. Twenty-two months after the start of the crisis, banks continue to stash their potential losses on toxic assets under the carpet. The credit remains down. And the wishes of "new regulations" remain very "infra". Stimulus plans, they remain uncoordinated and shy in Europe, as the IMF said. In short, the recovery will be very low. As the Japan in the 1990s, and for the same reasons of financial convenience, the world is aimed at understanding a "lost decade".

Optimists point to the right signals such as industrial production in China or the decline of job losses in the United States. The proceedings in the United States of "stress tests" on the 19 major US banks was seen as reassuring financial markets despite the controversy over the arrangements behind the scenes. Banking circuits emerge a bit, the stock market took over colors. The vicious circle of banking thrombosis that reinforces the recession, which aggravated the losses of the banks, in turn began to be reversed in a virtuous circle ("Barclays Capital Weekly" from May 8). Michael Heise, an economist at Allianz, said that the German recession mitigated by stimulus will be that of 3.5, below the 5.6 provided by the IMF. Will the Fund, which corrected downwards its forecast every three months, now have to revise them upward Are pessimists losing the part Verdict in three months.