“Calling on morality to denounce France’s debt is not without danger”

“This question, deficit and debt, is a question that poses a moral problem”declared François Bayrou on the steps of the Hôtel de Matignon, during the transfer of power on December 13. “Relieving your burdens on your children is very frowned upon, and rightly so. » This is not the first time that the Christian Democrat has accused the public debt of being « immoral ». Already during the 2007 presidential campaign, he spoke of ” shame “ and even “dishonor”. An obsession that has never left this man steeped in Christian culture. In it, the sinner is a debtor, the Messiah a “redeemer” (“the one who redeems” our debt).

In the Our Father prayer, the basis of the Christian religion, the fifth request is written as follows in Greek: “And forgive us our debts, As we have forgiven our debtors”which is translated as “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Forgiveness is therefore assimilated to debt forgiveness. In Aramaic, the language of Christ, it is also the same word which designates “this” et ” mistake “. This is also the case in the German language with « Debt »as Nietzsche pointed out in Genealogy of morality. However, in Europe, as we know, Germany has, over the decades, imposed its vision of monetary and budgetary issues. In his ordoliberal approach, balance is almost sacred and debt is a disgrace.

In financial demonology, the worst devil is public debt. This collective sin is committed to the detriment of “our children”. Many economists have been trying, for years, to debunk this cliché, stringing together arguments: when we bequeath a debt “to our children”we necessarily bequeath an equivalent debt; it is not our children who pay the debts we contract, but ourselves – the average maturity of public loans is in fact eight years; any recovery through debt leads to an increase in private investment and therefore… increases the wealth bequeathed to our children; future generations will never really be harmed because the State does ” to roll “ the debt – he repays the loans when due by taking out new loans – and that inflation, little by little, eats away at it; etc. Nothing helps, the “burden-bequeathed-to-our-children” still haunts politics.

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