[Skybird]

This opinion piece includes economy, but goes beyond it. The NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG writes:
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Who is footing the bill for the insanity of recent years?

Since the financial crisis, central principles of democracy and the market economy have dissolved in the frenzy of cheap money. Inflation is now raising the question of who are the losers in an era of excess.

They called Donald Trump a clown and triumphed when he was voted out. They called Boris Johnson a clown and triumphed when he had to resign. Defenders of liberal democracy bathed in the frothy feeling that they had beaten and weakened the populists.

How wrong one can be. Post-fascist Giorgia Meloni has made her dream come true and has been Italian prime minister for a week. The right-wing populist Sweden Democrats are effectively part of the new coalition in Stockholm. Most worryingly, however, Emmanuel Macron's government only used a decree to get its budget through parliament, which is packed with right-wing and left-wing extremists. In the long run, such emergency measures destabilize any regime - and that in the EU's second hegemonic power after Germany.

The odd couple of Johnson and Trump is also experiencing a second spring. One is experiencing a renaissance among the Tories as prime minister of the heart. Compared to the state of affairs in his party, he seems almost a paragon of predictability.

The other hovers over American politics as a nemesis; the only open question is whether he will run himself in 2024 or leave the presidential candidacy to a person of his choice.

With every crisis, capitalism does away with itself a little more

The advocates of liberal democracy made the mistake of confusing cause with effect. Neither Trump and Johnson nor the motley crew of other populists represent the central problem. They are only a symptom.

The challenge that, while not destroying liberal democracy, is putting considerable strain on it is the crisis of legitimacy of the market economy. It began with the near-collapse of the financial system and has continued ever since.

The distortions are economic in origin. However, those responsible have demonstrated an astonishing technical mastery in keeping the machinery running despite ever new shocks - whether Greek bankruptcy, pandemic or Ukraine war. It is more difficult to contain the political fallout. Liberal democracy is experiencing an ongoing crisis of accountability and trust.

In 2008, we all learned a term from the unwieldy slang of the globalized economy: "too big to fail." Anyone deemed relevant to the survival of the system must be bailed out by the state.

Initially, financial institutions such as UBS and Commerzbank benefited from this. Now, the illustrious circle of the indispensable also includes energy companies such as Uniper in Germany and Axpo in Switzerland.

In the past, however, company bosses at UBS, for example, regarded the use of state aid as the ultimate failure and resigned, but today bailouts are seen as inevitable as rain and snow.

Christoph Brand, the CEO of Axpo, is making no move to step down. Even the company's owners, some Swiss cantons, are only looking at their toes with embarrassment, leaving the bail-out to the central government in Bern. Federalism has obviously degenerated into a fair-weather event.

Individual responsibility, the basis of every market economy, is eroding. A creeping process of habituation makes the anomaly not exactly the rule, but no longer a scandal either.

When a select few receive the accolade of systemic relevance, the broad masses do not want to follow suit. "No company should run the risk of falling through the cracks of vital support." This is not said by a trade unionist or a functionary of a social association, but by Albrecht von der Hagen, CEO of the German Association of Family Businesses.

In the past, bankruptcies were still part of capitalism. Today, even entrepreneurs are calling for subsidies in a stern tone. Who could blame them in view of high energy prices? Even during the pandemic, many industrialized countries distributed so much money that fewer bankruptcies were recorded than in normal years.

With every crisis that capitalism settles in this way, it gets rid of itself a little more. When responsibility dwindles, so does trust. People are prone to envy and resentment, so it is easy to assume that others are benefiting from the windfall while you yourself are getting too little.

The syndrome of the presumed short-sighted is one of the most dangerous driving forces in politics and one of the sources from which populism draws.

The era of exaggerations seems like an evil haunting

In an age of ultra-loose monetary policy and emergency bailouts that can only be counted in trillions, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder who is footing the bill for the perceived insanity of recent years. If the high inflation does not end next year, the middle class will discover that they are among the big losers. The savers, the prudent and the high performers will then be the dumb ones. This arouses fears of relegation. These are reinforced by the feeling of being ruled by anonymous powers.

Who is to understand why low-quality real estate in the USA is triggering a global financial crisis. Who doesn't think negative interest rates and stock markets driven to all-time highs by crises of all things are evil spooks? Is high government debt the devil's work or a blessing, as a growing crowd of economists claims? The answers are so complicated that they only create new feelings of powerlessness.

In the global and European financial crises, central banks grew in importance far beyond their original mandate of monetary stability. They became the last lifeline of the system. At the same time, their special independent position relates only to their narrowly defined actual mandate.

Restraint and political tact would therefore be called for. The opposite is happening. The obviously overburdened president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, also wants to save the climate. Instead of fighting inflation with all her might, she is also squinting with one eye on Italy's national debt. Lagarde is venturing even further into the forbidden zone of government financing.

The gap between the scope of such decisions and their democratic legitimacy has widened in the last decade. This is also true of constitutional judges, whose expertise does not keep pace with their judgmentalism. The German Constitutional Court, for example, feels called upon to issue detailed guidelines on climate policy.

Judges and central bankers, the entire caste of parastatal functionaries has gained considerable influence. They act with technical virtuosity, but have never been confirmed in a popular election. This, too, is part of the ambiguous phenomena of this epoch.

Neoliberalism has won itself to death

The usurpation of powers, however, fits into a time in which state authorities feel responsible for everything. The refrain is: Necessity knows no commandment, and it often serves to undermine or abolish proven control mechanisms. This damages democracy, which is based on the separation of powers, clear responsibilities and trust in the predictability of the rules of the game.

Power is being dissipated - not because ministers, central bankers or constitutional judges are striving for dictatorial powers, but because parliaments and the media can no longer find a precisely defined addressee for their claim to control.

Neoliberalism came into being with the promise of less state and more private initiative and thus an allocation of responsibility. It has won itself to death. The opposing forces have long since gained the upper hand.

After the collapse of the financial world, which was only narrowly averted in 2008, Joe Ackermann boasted that Deutsche Bank did not need state aid. He was met with scorn and derision when the Frankfurt-based bank later went into a tailspin. But he was right. He insisted on the responsibility of managers to make their companies crisis-proof in good time. Ackermann just didn't realize that he belonged to a world that had disappeared. The new era calls for other role models: politicians who open up rescue packages; managers who willingly slip under them; and citizens who turn into grateful charity recipients because of all the rescue packages.
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