€800 Billion. The European Union’s Magnificent Project

The opening section challenges the authority of economic forecasting through irony, historical examples and a critique of the financial press. From Warren Buffett’s enormous cash reserves to famous failed predictions before the 1929 crash, the author questions the confidence placed in economists and introduces the central contradiction of uncertainty: while markets claim to fear it, other sectors may thrive on it.

Grab your calculator. Otherwise, you’ll get lost among all those zeros. This nonsense is about the economy.

You might say this is my recurring theme, and you’d be right. I like to explain how they’re fleecing us without anyone reacting—one might say we like to act as hetaerae, or rather as eromenoi; people have reverted to the customs of Ancient Greece. In Chile, a book that still hasn’t received the recognition it deserves—*The Scandalous Loves of the Philosophers* by Josefo Leónidas (whose real name was José León Monardes)—humorously exposed the habits of famous figures like Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Athenaeus. In its pages, Aristotle, a young Athenian eromenos and his disciple, exclaims ecstatically: “How delicious you are, Plato!” However, Plato did not found any pension fund (AFP), did not own any health insurance company (Isapre), nor did he receive gifts from the Chilean government like Ponce Lerou and other crooks.

But let’s get to the point. Every single day, I’m amazed by the headlines in the financial press that cater to the rich jerks.

Today, Les Échos in Paris runs the headline:

“Warren Buffett and the Mystery of the $300 Billion.” The “Pope of Investing” is sitting on a mountain of liquidity that just keeps growing. Is this a sign of an impending stock market crash? Without asking what Warren Buffett did to accumulate that amount of money—and as always—economists try to make predictions, guess the future, and steal Yolanda Sultana’s thunder. Irving Fischer became famous when, just a few days before the worst stock market crash in history, he announced, with great clarity and solemnity: “Stock prices have reached what appears to be a permanent plateau.” The crash occurred between October 24 and 29, 1929. On the 21st, Fischer had asserted: “The stock market is trembling solely because of the madness of a few.” The sun was at its zenith and would remain there in a perpetual summer… The stock market crash plunged tens of millions of citizens into the most appalling poverty. It took no fewer than two world wars to pull the world out of this predicament. This is no joke. Another figure, Paul Samuelson, a distinguished economist, summed up the wisdom of the markets with a quote worthy of being engraved in bronze: “The markets predicted nine of the last five recessions!”

As you can see, there’s nothing to worry about. This morning, a panel of luminaries discussed the ups and downs of the current economy on Radio France Culture. I mention this because France Culture has long been known for featuring intelligent, cultured, and interesting guests, hosted by extremely professional journalists. Today, Christine Ockrent—a journalist and producer of the program *Affaires étrangères* (whose tagline is: “The best experts tell us about a changing world where everything is accelerating… sic”), a graduate of Sciences Po Paris—welcomed distinguished guests:* Agathe Demarais, economist and head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ (ECFR) geo-economics research;* Florence Pisani, chief economist at Candriam and professor at Paris Dauphine University;* François Chimits, senior economist at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) and an affiliated economist at the Center for Prospective Studies and International Information (CEPII);* Sébastien Jean, professor of economics at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts and associate director of the Geo-Economics and Geo-Finance initiative at IFRI (French Institute of International Relations)… Phew!

It even gave me a headache… Cristina Ockrent recalled a truism that’s very common among economists—one you have to know to get your degree: “Economic and financial actors detest uncertainty.” All the guests nodded in agreement. The sacred truths of economics are not open to debate, because whoever doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind (James 1:6), and everything that does not come from faith is sin (Romans 14:23).