They'll never learn

They cannot help it. It doesn’t matter what History mastered us. It doesn’t even matter what today’s world shows us. For politicians, to say that we are going well, or we will be soon, it’s as normal as a rainy day in Dublin. It must be the use of lying.

But that’s exactly what Japanese Finance minister, Kaoru Yosano, said. He argued that the “worst is over”. His counterparts from in G7 were just out of a summit and agreed with him. It’s still needed more money for the IMF, more liquidity for the banks and more gasoline to kill the fire, more resources for the 25 people who got us here first. But nobody panics, the worst is over.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound new. I lost the count on how many times I have seen that. If I had a penny for each minister saying “we’re close to the end” or “everything’s going better” since January last year, now I’d be rich enough to be able to fix the problem. But everytime that happened before, the hope turned into desperation after a few days -or even hours. As G. W. Bush said, “First time you fool me, it’s my fault; second time... you don’t fool me a second time”. And if you try a third, I get angry.

Health authorities warn: being a politician distorts perception of reality. That’s why they never drive their cars. I don’t know what to think, if lying is something innate to them -for the double side of politician and economists- or if they are too cowards to face the truth. Or maybe, they are just idiots.

Something is clear in all this: we are in a job destruction time. And at an impressive rate. Apart from politicians, people living normal lifes have two ways of engaging the day-to-day routine: scared not knowing when they’ll lose their jobs or wondering how to survive until next month without a job.

The US destructs jobs at a rate of half a million per month, Spain leads Europe unemployment with the historic number of four million people without jobs (and it’s expected to rise up to 20% of unemployment) and the UK is already talking about a lost generation of young professionals, those born between the 80’s and first 90’s.

The recovery will last for long. The IMF -from the independence that grants not having to face elections every four years- calculates that all recessions since 1960 lasted twice as long as the crisis that made them. The average is two years. Two years with people living unemployed of fearing from losing their jobs; we are not talking only of unemployment and economy breakdown, we are talking of social frustration.

That’s why The Economist warns: the worse for the is to admitt the worse is over. It is not over, it’s yet to come. Einstein said about crisis that they were a time to renew, change and development. To advance and convert mistakes into new ideas and grow thanks to that.

Peggy Noonan follows that and argues that this crisis maybe is what this world needed. Too worried about perfection, impossible goals and lifes lived over what we have, this shock is maybe what the world need to stop and wake up. Including the politicians.

Surprisingly, Obama has been up to date the only one with the courage to say things are bad. He recognized that the worse isn’t over yet and the recovery will last for long and will be hard.

Honestly, I prefer Obama’s (partial) sincerity than European ministers’ blindness and negationism.