Storm financial Capital falls into the water

In the storm, Capital and labour are in a boat. Storm financial, Capital falls into the water. Work remains on board. But in wanting to go back in the boat, Capital will perhaps push work in the famous frigid water of egotistical calculation...

In the crisis of capitalism that we face today, to play not only the future of finance, the dividing line between the State and markets, the shift of power to Asia, but also, and perhaps more importantly, sharing wealth. Away for a time our friends traders, who are preparing to invest a small share of their bonus found in sumptuous Bacchanalia in New York to bury the promises of Pittsburgh. Let us focus on the good old sharing between capital and labour, that which was beautiful controversy of pre-crisis. It will inevitably pushed by financial shocks and current economic. In the CAC 40 companies, for example, profits plummeted 40 last year, while employment has hardly budged. And, this year, employment will have probably decreased while profits, they will have stagnated.

A young researcher at the University of Nantes, Fabien Tripier, had the good idea to look at what happened in the 1930s, France and the United States. The results he submitted at the Symposium of the French Association of economic science last month are informative. The weight of wages in national income grew by 9 in France and 15 in the United States from 1929 to 1932, before social measures of Léon Blum and Franklin Roosevelt. Tripier has also worked on fluctuations of the share in eleven countries developed over the past 40 years. He succeeds to the same conclusion - the share of labour rises when the economy goes wrong, it down when it's going better. Hence its conclusion, cautious but clear: "these results suggest that we should observe a progression on the part of the work in the coming period, in the particularly high income economies will be affected by the crisis."

There are at least two good reasons to make the work less hit than the capital by a decline in activity. The first is theoretical. Capital, therefore the shareholder, is at risk. In good weather, remuneration flies. By bad weather, it collapses. It is normal, in a sense as in the other. The second is practical. When the storm hit, the captain is not the time to go sailing, so lowering the salaried workforce. In France, in industry, production declined by 16 of mid-2008 to mid-2009, and the use of "only" 4.

But this time, will share switch again on employees Patrick Artus, Chief Economist of Natixis, doubt it. First, private debt will there be to fuel the growth, which will therefore remain low for years. unemployment will rise; employees will be difficult to extract increases. In the Japan, in the United States, Germany, wages fall since the beginning of the year. Then, the rise of the public debt will limit the resources available for businesses, which will therefore have to find themselves what pay their investments in financial markets. Finally, savers and investors continue to require very high yields. They refuse to risk.

Here, there is a real difference with the 1930s. During the great depression, capital was held mainly by a few tens of thousands of homes. Now, it is by hundreds of millions of people: retirees and future retirees in the country where the pension works by capitalization - and also, where people buy shares or of mutual funds to supplement their retirement. With this wonderful democratization of capital and therefore of capitalism, the ratio of forces with the work has completely changed. But, as in the 1930s, in the new sharing of wealth that is at stake, the growth in the years to come.