Croissance économique et retournements de tendance au 20e siècle : une mise en perspective de la «crise» actuelle

Economic growth and trend reversais in the 20th c : a look at the present "crisis", Jean-Charles Asselain. The first thing necessary to do in the present crisis is to define the very notion of crisis. But even more it is necessary to compare it with the past dysfunctions. One immediately sees the atypical character of a crisis that today couples poor records (such as unemployment levels) with healthy economic results (increase of foreign trade, increases in productivity). It's a curious disjunction, especially since prior to 1973, all the indicators were on green. The crisis, therefore, results first and foremost from the oil shocks whose effect must not be minimized. By lowering the profitability of investment, by forcing entrepreneurs to increase productivity at the expense of employment, this brutal shock — that at the beginning barely weighed on salaries — did not, however, resuit in the reduction of international trade that the Third World, because of its debts, continues to support. But the financial (the Third World's getting out of debt) as well as the mental (the salaried workers' resistance to the loss of purchasing power is diminishing) adjustments explain the continuation of a crisis that the austerity policies set up by some authorities are making worse. The strong French franc policy, for example, limits the entrepreneurs' recourse to capital markets, characterized by, it is true, high interest rates.Asselain Jean-Charles. Croissance économique et retournements de tendance au 20e siècle : une mise en perspective de la «crise» actuelle. In: Vingtième Siècle, revue d'histoire, n°52, octobre-décembre 1996. Les crises économiques du 20e siècle. pp. 7-30