Martin Wolf acaba de publicar un
artículo en el Financial Times sobre el comportamiento de las elites (política, económica,...) durante esta crisis. El centenario del comienzo de la Primera Guerra Mundial que "celebramos" este año le lleva a una reflexión poco habitual sobre cómo cree que estas elites se comportan y su relación con la crisis financiera actual. No aporta argumentos que sean novedosos, pero su exposición y claridad me parece magistral. Y el autor, comentarista reputado del Finacial Times, evidentemente, no es sospechoso de ser un anti-sistema. Algunos párrafos extractados, en inglés:
An
implicit deal exists between elites and the people: the former obtain
the privileges and perquisites of power and property; the latter, in
return, obtain security and, in modern times, a measure of prosperity.
If elites fail, they risk being replaced. The replacement of failed
economic, bureaucratic and intellectual elites is always fraught. But,
in a democracy, replacement of political elites at least is swift and
clean. In a despotism, it will usually be slow and almost always bloody.
(...)
The
economic, financial, intellectual and political elites mostly
misunderstood the consequences of headlong financial liberalisation.
Lulled by fantasies of self-stabilising financial markets, they not only
permitted but encouraged a huge and, for the financial sector,
profitable bet on the expansion of debt.
(...)
If the mass of the people view their economic elite as richly rewarded
for mediocre performance and interested only in themselves, (...)
expecting [being rescued] when things go badly [by the public sector].
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