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More than a financial crisis: The age of misfortune

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 23 September 2008

Trade-Exchange Rates Economy-budget

More than a financial crisis: The age of misfortune

By Frank Schirrmacher

18th September 2008 Stefan Zweig about the time before the First World War: "The years of security." Auden on the inter-war period: "The Age of Anxiety." Is perhaps the time for a new time has come?

It should be Warren Buffett large set of the "weapons of mass destruction on the financial markets today quite literally: morally, politically and historically. You have to just watch how the parties to the explosions in the markets linguistically want to turn off the air. A "financial crisis"? With the same law could be argued that the infamous specialty of hurricane "Ike" is to open on the thirtieth Airkonzerte latitude to disturb, but everything else, he also durcheinanderwirbelt, hide.

There must be somewhere around madman

A so-called "financial crisis" in a society where finance the synonyms for social rationality have become nothing more than a brutal sense of crisis. There must be somewhere around madman, which is not noticed until Monday, because her delusion was identical with the logic of the established system. They destroyed property, the entire government budgets in accordance with, but nothing in them has at least the size of the big culprit, there is no overwhelming talent, it is a phrase from another context quote, "not even one in the traditional sense low passion, the would be large by the intensity, but overwhelmingly small weaknesses, egoism, Verstiegenheiten. "

You have not understood it!

The fact has begun to infect us in eerie rapidity, and that Consecutive is that we accept it. This just one example: For structural and institutional failures crime is that the responsibility increases, the further you are from the actual "facts" removed. This will be for heads of Finanzhasardeure but do not apply. They are not saying that they ordered or prevented acts, but - and this is a long with all that society accept them through - they say, as the heads of IKB that they practice the acts and practices do not understand and never understood have. You have not understood it!

One must remember that this is us over the years in talk shows and forums as "rationality" has been advertised. And now there is an interruption in the causal chain as an excuse given, when no one polluter is. The purely semantic difficulty, outdated legal concepts to the misdeeds of the "financial markets" to apply, allowing the actors, as scientists in a failed experiment to feel. Hence the talk of pseudo experts. Hence the great upheaval debt model. Hence the lack of outrage, the defeatism of a society, which in recent years without noticing, a devastating destruction of their ideals has experienced.

D rei stages of a growing disillusionment

Therefore, the phenomenon that Hans-Olaf Henkel and its Social engineering clones continuously improved operating instructions call for a catchy, the television broadcast from each and every expert talks speakers squawk. As if it comes to the instructions for use of an i-Pod gone. As if the promise in a hundred years, Sabine Merz Christansen plus plus Westerwelle Henkel plus plus plus Merkel Clement was not much more that it is the guide to our society’s happiness. Whoever denies this, saying the untruth and can be transferred: The neoliberal ideology has a good sense and good fortune connection between the individual and globalization manufactured exclusively was economically justified.

Our society is moving into an era of the accident inside. The phase of the spill may be shorter than during the era of security or fear, but it faces the door, and everyone feels it. There are three stages of a growing disillusionment designate. It began with the destruction of the political-moral responsibility to the Iraq war, until today an ongoing trauma of European policy and its elites. As for the financial crisis was the rate of institutional responsibility: We do not know what is happening. We do not know how it works. If human rights, freedom and peace at the level of collective policies are what rationality in the economic and social life, it was the Iraq war, the beginning of a new disaster story. Nobody has yet written the story of those who initially believed that is correct, what is happening. Meanwhile it is reported - from the New York Times columnists to relevant - even to speak.

The traditional life cycle is destroyed

The second phase was the self-discourse of the social welfare of society. Not that the reformed or social systems should be adjusted, the next step in the fabrication of the accident, because everyone knew that they were no longer viable. The fatality was the assertion that the reform would be forced to rational arguments arising from the high sense of the economy and financial markets are derived. If it is true what Peter G. Peterson says (see also: Interview: Peter G. Peterson about America’s crisis http://translate.google.com/transla... ) that a large part of the monumental disaster to the markets on the vanity of the protagonists goes back, then this economic valence of vanity in German Misfortune discourse in recent years to study the best.

It was in all the talk shows and speeches never to win a future draft of uniting force to achieve, but a driving desire abzureagieren in which vanity and messianic mission, unbridled idealization of the globalized emotional rationality while patronizing an entire nation ( "take risks!") a horror marriage received. The results are not fictitious, they are available Eyes: demoralization of the growing generation, destruction of universities and education, fragmentation of biographies, fraud over security and retirement age and so forth - in short: Threat or destruction of traditional life in almost all its details.

A front of our eyes together misfortune

Marriage Henkel and Co. take the floor or Pierer Zumwinkel and the injustice of the world lament: We complain about it now. Certainly, there were worse times. Wars, famines, epidemics. "As bad as in the tale’s long us yet," said the German soul and thinks of Star before the star rain. And also not as bad as Forty-five and eighteen, and certainly not as in the Sahel. What are there already broken a few banks and the destruction of a lot of money?

But it is not an accident, as the people at all times and in all worlds überfällt again, it’s not about bitterly cold people and children in the forest will skilfully as Hansel and Gretel. The accident from which one must talk, is a manufactured, one produced a before our eyes together accident - an accident, with diligence in the world is and its instigators, perpetrators, accomplices, Beihelfer, Mitwisser differently than in a housing slump (to quote Enzensberger) is not designated.

We are about to make a word of the "Elective Affinities" to vary us an unhappy society rooms. The destruction orgy, which is in the financial markets play in the social anonymous, which between people is a lie. We do not have many options to respond. But what started all history, can we say what is a lie.

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