The Germany was thrown into hyperinflation

The most powerful State of the world is more fragile than Microsoft or Exxon finance. One day, perhaps, its Treasury will not pay its debt, while the firm of Bill Gates and the oil giant are sitting on piles of gold eliminating doubt. This is the exact meaning of the decision announced the week last by the rating agency & Standard Poor's put the United States federal debt "under surveillance with negative implication", to use his jargon of severe boarding master. This was obviously not a surprise that has their eyes open to the world. A few days earlier, the IMF had questioned the credibility of the US fiscal policy, both in its economic Outlook and in its "Fiscal Monitor", in his jargon he also inimitable ("the United States need to accelerate the adoption of credible measures to reduce their debt ratios"). But, if this is not a surprise, it is a symbol. A symbol of a world that changes, and that changes so that we find it difficult to enter it. It is here in finance, but policy and economy also.

Because the US public debt is not like the others. Its titles, the T-bonds (bonds), are, or rather were until last Monday, considered as the safest financial product in the world. The United States is the only major borrower who has never known the bankruptcy. The United Kingdom failed in 1672 and experienced some difficulties in the 1930s. The France majestically cheated his creditors during the revolution in 1796 with the bankruptcy of two-thirds. The Germany was thrown into hyperinflation. The Russia has repudiated its debts in 1917. America, it has always honoured its commitments. Inspiring confidence, she was able to make mountains of obligations which have strengthened its financial power, as US public debt market is today, by far, the deepest and the most liquid in the world. In other words, investors may buy or sell billions of dollars of T-bonds instantly with the certainty of finding a seller or a buyer. Any global finance is built on this giant deposit of over 9,000 billion.

And it is therefore all the building of global finance which is weakened by doubts about the US debt. But investors are unable to imagine otherwise. Evidenced by their reaction to the announcement of Standard & Poor's: panic, they were sold by mass actions. The courts have lost more than 2. And with this money, they... bought the supposedly most secure product in the world, American State bonds!

Difficult to imagine this new world extends far beyond finance. Because, in this world, the State becomes one actor like the others. However, since the 1930s, was not the case. It was the guardian of the temple. In case of crisis, alone had the power of fire to save the world, as the out of the crisis in the United States with the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, the theory of the request by John Maynard Keynes and especially the funding of a massive war effort had shown in the 1940s. Only he could also play the role of "ultimate lender" through central banks. And that's exactly what happened during the crisis of 2007-2008. But it was the last time. We grilled the State cartridge. Even in America, there is now a doubt on its ability to repay. In the next crisis, it will no longer play the role of spendthrift and lender as a last resort.

This third party of the role of the State in the finance and economy is a simple observation: the money is outside the State. As the war escaped the State on September 11, 2001, or information State escaped via WikiLeaks. Money, war, information... This is the essence of power is at stake. To understand this new world, he should be back before the treaties of Westphalia, which syndicates in 1648 the framework of what became the nation State. Too far, too different, too complicated and mostly too scary. Hence the temptation, paradoxical withdrawal on the State and the nation, in France as reflected by the rise of populism. It is urgent to think and explain a universe where the State is no longer the last rampart.