BACK TO MESOPOTAMIA?

"Austerity—essentially saving and paying back—is probably a recipe for a long, deep recession and social unrest ... In ancient Mesopotamia, debt was commonplace; individual debts were recorded on clay tablets. Periodically, upon the ascendancy of a new monarch, debts would be forgiven: in other words, the slate would be wiped clean. The challenge facing today’s politicians is how clean to wipe the slates. In considering some of the potential measures likely to be required, the reader may be struck by the essential problem facing politicians: there may be only painful ways out of the crisis ... The government might also take action to reduce dependency on imported oil by investing in new technologies and modernizing existing infrastructure ... The programs [Boston Consulting Group] described would be drastic. They would not be popular, and they would require broad political coordinate and leadership - something that politicians have replaced up til now with playing for time, in spite of a deteriorating outlook. Acknowledgment of the facts may be the biggest hurdle. Politicians and central bankers still do not agree on the full scale of the crisis and are therefore placing too much hope on easy solutions. We need to understand that balance sheet recessions are very different from normal recessions. The longer the politicians and bankers wait, the more necessary will be the response outlined in this paper. Unfortunately, reaching consensus on such tough action might requiring an environment last seen in the 1930s."

Zur Studie von David Rhodes und Dr. Daniel Stelter für Boston Consulting Group (September 2011) »