VERITAS ODIT MORAS
“Veritas odit moras” is a line from Seneca the Younger’s
version of Oedipus. It means “Truth hates delay.”
- We are currently in a "pre crisis" that will last from September 2007 to July 2010 - a phase where it will go down and up, but mostly down. Stock prices will fall and rise, as will unemployment, and many will during this period argue that we are on track, said the Spanish economy professor Santiago Nino Becerra in an interview with a Danish newspaper in July last year.
He predicted a farewell to the middle class and hello to a community of a small elite and a huge underclass when the "real" crisis would occur in 2010.
According to the professor, what we are experiencing right now is a systemic crisis, not a normal recession.
- But only when the governments' emergency packages are all used, the real system crisis will start, he said.
- When there is no more money left, we will fall into an abyss. A fall that will last at least two years worldwide. Then there will be a couple of years of stagnation before the economy slowly will be coming up again, but on very different terms. It is brutal and terrible, concluded the Spanish professor.
If the professor is right, the real crisis will be starting next month. And perhaps this is what we now see the contours of after the crisis to its full extent hit Greece and other Mediterranean countries this spring, forcing the euro to its deepest crisis since its introduction? Even if governments in Europe swiftly agreed to a massive rescue package, it will most likely not be enough to save the common currency. If the monetary union is to survive, member states will most likely have to abandon their egos and greatly increase political integration.
The drama of recent days will, no doubt, go down in history as a moment that will push Europe in a new direction whether we like it or not. And the stakes couldn't be higher.
- This moment could come to represent the founding act of a European federal state created out of necessity, as French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has suggested.
- But it could also mark the beginning of the fall of the currency union with financially strong countries - like Germany and the Netherlands - wary of too much centralism.
The old ‘truths’ no longer apply. But are there new ones? Truth hates delay.
Aage Myhre
Editor
|
Click on the buttons to open and read each of VilNews' 18 sub-sections 
