{"id":20915,"date":"2020-10-17T15:05:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T13:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/?page_id=20915"},"modified":"2021-01-09T12:20:47","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T11:20:47","slug":"the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist","title":{"rendered":"The testament of a disabused economist"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-page\" data-elementor-id=\"20915\" class=\"elementor elementor-20915\" data-elementor-post-type=\"page\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-410f90c elementor-section-content-middle elementor-reverse-mobile elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"410f90c\" data-element_type=\"section\" data-e-type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-50 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-6815776\" data-id=\"6815776\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-e-type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-3699a1c elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"3699a1c\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-large\">My new book:<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-fc5a823 elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"fc5a823\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<h1 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-large\">\u201cThe testament of a disabused economist\u201d<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-50 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-b7607db\" data-id=\"b7607db\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-e-type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-d9a0b4d img-fluid elementor-widget elementor-widget-image\" data-id=\"d9a0b4d\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"image.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/livre.fnac.com\/a15174432\/Michel-Santi-Le-testament-d-un-economiste-desabuse\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/COUV.jpg?fit=483%2C685&#038;ssl=1\" title=\"COUV\" alt=\"le testament d&#039;un economiste d\u00e9sabus\u00e9\" class=\"elementor-animation-grow\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-fa7a3e9 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"fa7a3e9\" data-element_type=\"section\" data-e-type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-5ae7575\" data-id=\"5ae7575\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-e-type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-341d41c elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"341d41c\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>Our duty is to rebuild society on a solid basis, as well as making deep reforms to financial markets and getting rid once and for all of their intrinsic ability to cause harm. We haven\u2019t learned anything from 2008 and have even worsened our exposure, and exacerbated our risks, so much so that this extreme vulnerability is now infecting even the most well-off. I dare to be the spokesman of an overwhelming majority of \u201cordinary\u201d citizens by affirming that we will accept suffering this acute and unprecedented crisis (once again!) on the sole condition that our system\u2019s structural and substantive vices are immediately put right. \u00a0May the statesmen and women who have enough moral fibre to reject the economy and finance continuing to reign as supreme leaders, while society is bound to follow them with servility, come out of the shadows. The economic catastrophe that is lying in unavoidable wait for us is asking the right questions, and is making its demands for a deep cleansing. May this virus be thanked for it, and win the Nobel prize for economics, if it causes us all to mobilise.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-7fbb109 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"7fbb109\" data-element_type=\"section\" data-e-type=\"section\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;classic&quot;}\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-a571061\" data-id=\"a571061\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-e-type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-6ec7138 elementor-align-center elementor-widget elementor-widget-button\" data-id=\"6ec7138\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"button.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-button-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"elementor-button elementor-button-link elementor-size-sm\" href=\"https:\/\/livre.fnac.com\/a15174432\/Michel-Santi-Le-testament-d-un-economiste-desabuse\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"elementor-button-content-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"elementor-button-text\">Buy online<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-5f6abda elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"5f6abda\" data-element_type=\"section\" data-e-type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-3494729\" data-id=\"3494729\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-e-type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-0b33c4c elementor-widget elementor-widget-shortcode\" data-id=\"0b33c4c\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-e-type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"shortcode.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-shortcode\"><style><\/style><div class=\"wplp_outside wplp_widget_20900\" style=\"max-width:100%;\"><span class=\"wpcu_block_title\">English Articles<\/span><div id=\"wplp_widget_20900\" class=\"wplp_widget_default wplp_container vertical swiper wplp-swiper default cols1\" data-theme=\"default\" data-post=\"20900\" style=\"\" data-max-elts=\"10\" data-per-page=\"10\"><div class=\"wplp_listposts swiper-wrapper\" id=\"default_20900\" style=\"width: 100%;\" ><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31423\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31423\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/liquidity\/the-end-of-dubais-certainty\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dubai.png?fit=1024%2C1536&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dubai.png?w=1024&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dubai.png?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dubai.png?resize=683%2C1024&ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dubai.png?resize=768%2C1152&ssl=1 768w\" alt=\"The End of Dubai\u2019s Certainty\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31423\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/liquidity\/the-end-of-dubais-certainty\"  class=\"title\">The End of Dubai\u2019s Certainty<\/a><span class=\"date\">April 6, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">Dubai never claimed to be a paradise. It claimed to be a certainty. For three decades, glass towers rose on a simple promise: here, the world could keep turning even as it burned elsewhere. That promise was the Emirates\u2019 true export. Not oil. Not tourism. Stability as infrastructure.\nOn March 2, 2026, that infrastructure took a direct hit.\n\nDubai International fell silent. The rest followed.\nThere are moments when markets do not correct. They withdraw.\nIn the hours following the first Iranian strikes, credit spreads on Emirati bank debt widened sharply \u2014 before the official open. On several international trading desks, prices disappeared from screens. Not out of panic, but because the models no longer worked: you cannot assign probabilities to what escapes any known distribution.\nDollar funding tightened within hours. Not vanished \u2014 tightened. The distinction matters. This is not cardiac arrest. It is arrhythmia. And in finance, prolonged arrhythmia is enough.\nAuthorities suspended trading for forty-eight hours \u2014 a system-wide circuit breaker. At the same time, Dubai International \u2014 the world\u2019s busiest global hub \u2014 ceased operations.\nWhen planes are grounded and prices disappear, it is no longer a market signal. It is the market itself admitting it no longer knows.\n\nWhen moving becomes more valuable than producing\nThe issue is not the price of oil. It is the continuity of flows.\nThe Strait of Hormuz carries nearly 20% of global oil supply. It is not a tap. It is an artery. The UAE produces 3.6 million barrels per day; 1.5 million transit through the Fujairah pipeline \u2014 designed precisely to bypass the strait.\nThat is the point Iran struck.\nA burning field does not just signal threatened production. It signals that the alternative is vulnerable too. Producing no longer protects. Bypassing no longer protects either.\nThis shift is not unprecedented. But it is the first time since 1973 that it has hit an actor whose entire model depended on the absence of such a risk.\n\nThe peg, or the real price of dollar liquidity\nThe dirham\u2019s peg to the dollar reassures in normal times. Under stress, it reveals the constraint.\nThe UAE does not run an independent monetary policy. It imports that of the Federal Reserve. In practical terms, when dollar liquidity tightens, the domestic banking system cannot devalue or create a monetary buffer. It depends on reserves, swap lines, and access to international repo markets.\nWhen those channels become more expensive \u2014 or fragment \u2014 the constraint is immediate.\nThe peg is not a question of exchange rates. It is a funding architecture. And in extreme conditions, the question is no longer the level of rates, but access to dollars itself.\n\nWe are no longer in risk. We are in the unknown.\nRisk can be measured. Uncertainty \u2014 in the sense defined by Frank Knight \u2014 cannot.\nIn a risk regime, capital allocates. In an uncertainty regime, it withdraws.\nSince March 2, behavior has shifted accordingly. Not a disorderly flight, but silent adjustments. Requests to move assets toward Singapore or Hong Kong. Mandates revised. Exposures trimmed \u2014 marginally at first, then incrementally more.\nPanic is visible. Reallocation is not. It is slower \u2014 and more enduring.\nSingapore, for its part, is not waiting. On March 27, its monetary authority announced measures to position the city-state as a global hub for gold trading. This is not opportunism. It is positioning: to receive liquidity as it redefines itself.\nBecause that is what is happening. It is not only the quantity of liquidity that is changing. It is its nature, its price, and its geography.\n\nLondon or Beirut\nDubai\u2019s model rested on a simple premise: to remain outside the conflict in a region that is not.\nThat premise is now under stress.\nHistory offers two trajectories.\nLondon during the Blitz: infrastructure was hit, but core functions held. Law, markets, credibility \u2014 the sources of value \u2014 remained intact. Bombs did not reach the system\u2019s core.\nBeirut followed a different path. The difference was not the intensity of the strikes, but their nature: they directly undermined what sustained trust \u2014 neutrality, convertibility, the city\u2019s role as a regional financial hub. The model ceased to exist before the destruction was complete.\nThe question for Dubai is therefore not whether it will be hit. It already has been.The question is more precise: are the sources of its value vulnerable to this kind of conflict?\nIts neutrality \u2014 the ability to act as banker to all \u2014 was its central asset. Yet the UAE is now considering direct military involvement. This shift does not destroy balance sheets. It alters function.\nWhen an arbiter enters the game, it changes the nature of the field.\n\nLiquidity first. And beyond that \u2014 nothing is certain.\nWhat is unfolding goes beyond the Emirates.\nThe model of financial globalization assumed that peace was the baseline, and disruption the exception. That hierarchy is reversing.\nIn this regime, liquidity \u2014 in dollars, in collateral, in gold, in market access \u2014 is no longer a tool of optimization. It is a condition of participation.\nThe objective is no longer to maximize returns. It is to preserve the option of remaining in the system.\nThis is not merely an economic shift. It is a compression of time. The long term ceases to function. Decision horizons shrink. Survival premia replace risk premia.\nDubai will not disappear. But it is entering a zone where its defining advantage \u2014 being outside the game \u2014 can no longer be assumed.\nIn ten years\u2019 time, the question will not be whether the shock of 2026 was severe. It will be simpler, and harsher: did Dubai live through its Blitz \u2014 or, without realizing it, did it begin to resemble Beirut?<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/liquidity\/the-end-of-dubais-certainty\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31423\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31401\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31401\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wealth\/inequalities-santi\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/justice-sociale.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/justice-sociale.png?w=1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/justice-sociale.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/justice-sociale.png?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/justice-sociale.png?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/justice-sociale.png?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w\" alt=\"Inequality: The Gap That Obsesses, the Progress We Forget\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31401\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wealth\/inequalities-santi\"  class=\"title\">Inequality: The Gap That Obsesses, the Progress We Forget<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 31, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">What the Inequality Debate Fails to Measure\nIn France, wealth is viewed with suspicion. This is a cultural fact before it is an economic one. For the past twenty years, the wealth tax (ISF, then IFI), inheritance taxation, \u201ctax justice,\u201d and \u201cultra-rich\u201d have structured public debate as a series of totems \u2014 with one constant: the conviction that the gap between the top and the bottom of the distribution is, in itself, the problem to be solved. The work of Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman did not create this conviction. They gave it an academic framework, long-run data series, and a formalized structure. They made it unassailable \u2014 or at least difficult to challenge without being seen as a defender of privilege.\nIt is precisely this difficulty that makes the exercise necessary.\nLet us begin with what their critics rarely do. Piketty and Zucman are right on several empirical points. Wealth inequality has increased in most OECD countries since 1980. Legal tax avoidance mechanisms \u2014 stepped-up basis in the United States, split ownership structures and Dutreil pacts in France, foundations everywhere \u2014 allow a fraction of ultra-wealth to structurally escape inheritance taxation. Any critique that denies these facts loses credibility before it even begins.\nBut between these findings and the policy conclusions drawn from them lies a chain of choices \u2014 of measurement, framing, and values \u2014 that is rarely made explicit. It is this chain that this op-ed seeks to dismantle.\nWhat the Debate Confuses\nThe inequality debate constantly blends three distinct registers. Empirical facts: wealth concentration has increased. Methodological conventions: how do we define the income of the ultra-rich? Values: which indicator of social progress should be prioritized \u2014 reducing relative gaps, or raising the living standards of the least well-off?\nPiketty and Zucman measure with remarkable precision the gap between the first and the last runner in the race. The problem is that they look almost exclusively at that gap, without ever checking whether all runners have moved several kilometers forward. The result: normative choices presented as scientific findings. This slippage is not unique to their camp \u2014 liberals often do the same in reverse. This op-ed will try not to fall into the same trap.\nThe r &gt; g Framework: Solid, but Conditional\nThe relationship r &gt; g \u2014 the return on capital structurally exceeding growth \u2014 is the cornerstone of Piketty\u2019s argument. Per Krusell (Stockholm) and Anthony Smith (Yale) showed in the Journal of Political Economy (2015) that this dynamic depends on a crucial assumption: an elasticity of substitution between capital and labor greater than 1. If this elasticity is below 1 \u2014 as most empirical estimates suggest \u2014 concentration converges toward a finite limit. The Piketty dynamic does not disappear, but it ceases to be inevitable.\nThis is not a minor caveat. It is the condition for the validity of the entire framework. A result conditional on contested assumptions is not a law of nature. It is a thesis \u2014 and presenting it otherwise is excessive.\nZucman: A Real Problem, a Misleading Measure\nOne of Gabriel Zucman\u2019s most widely cited findings is that the 400 wealthiest Americans pay, proportionally, less tax than the middle class. This figure relies on including unrealized capital gains in income. If your assets rise by ten billion this year, Zucman counts ten billion as your income \u2014 even if you have sold nothing, received nothing, and that amount could collapse tomorrow.\nZucman\u2019s argument is serious: these gains represent real economic wealth that can durably escape taxation, through mechanisms such as stepped-up basis in the United States or split ownership in France. But this argument concerns a long-term structural advantage, not the current effective tax rate. The Congressional Budget Office, which excludes such gains, calculates effective tax rates for the top percentile at around 30%. The two methods answer two legitimate but different questions. Confusing them produces striking headlines and flawed diagnoses.\nRelative Inequality: Effects That Cannot Be Ignored\nPiketty does not merely measure gaps; he argues that relative inequality has independent causal effects on health, social cohesion, and democratic quality. The literature is substantial: Wilkinson and Pickett (The Spirit Level, 2009) documented robust correlations between inequality and public health indicators; Marmot established social gradients in health that persist at equal income levels; Gilens and Page suggest political capture of institutions by the very wealthy.\nThese works are not without weaknesses \u2014 sensitivity to samples, causality still debated: are unequal societies unhealthy because they are unequal, or are inequality and social pathologies both symptoms of a deeper institutional deficit? Yet they are too serious to be dismissed outright. This op-ed does not claim that relative inequality has no effects. It argues that these effects, real but debated in magnitude, are not sufficient on their own to justify the systemic fiscal overhaul proposed by Piketty and Zucman.\nThree Trajectories, One Question\nConsider Bangladesh. Between 1990 and 2020, the country reduced infant mortality by 85%, increased girls\u2019 school enrollment to 98%, and multiplied its per capita income fivefold. Its relative inequality increased slightly. Applied to this case, Piketty\u2019s indicator would signal deterioration. No serious observer would accept that conclusion.\nThe objection is valid: Bangladesh is a developing country. Take South Korea. Between 1980 and 2020, GDP per capita increased tenfold and life expectancy rose by fifteen years. The Gini coefficient moved from 0.33 to 0.35. Judged by inequality, Korea in 2020 is less just than in 1980. Judged by lived reality, it is incomparably more so.\nEven in France, between 1990 and 2022, the living standards of the bottom 10% increased by more than 30% in real terms (INSEE), while the Gini coefficient rose slightly. The gap widened; the floor rose.\nLooking only at the gap without looking at the floor is a mutilation of the diagnosis. But looking only at the floor without looking at the gap is another. The choice between these perspectives is a value judgment \u2014 not a scientific result.\nWhat This Op-Ed Assumes\nTo assert that the absolute condition of the most vulnerable should take precedence over relative gaps is a moral choice, not an empirical discovery. Liberal critics of Piketty often commit the very sin they denounce: presenting their framing as neutral rather than as a value system just as partial. This op-ed acknowledges its choices. It does not claim they are objective.\nIt also acknowledges this: the tax avoidance mechanisms documented by Zucman \u2014 stepped-up basis, split ownership, instrumentally used Dutreil pacts \u2014 are real problems. Recognizing that Piketty\u2019s overall diagnosis is overstated does not imply defending the fiscal status quo. That would be another form of intellectual dishonesty \u2014 and perhaps the most costly one, because it hands Piketty exactly the opponent he needs to be right.\nThree Proposals\nCorrect inheritance-related tax asymmetries. Transferring wealth without taxing accumulated capital gains is an unjustifiable advantage. In France, the combination of split ownership, the \u20ac100,000 allowance renewable every fifteen years, and Dutreil pacts allows significant business wealth to be transferred at very low effective rates. This is not a wealth tax. It is the correction of an asymmetry that even Piketty\u2019s critics should acknowledge.\nComplement relative indicators with measures of absolute poverty. The European poverty threshold, set at 60% of median income, has a perverse property: if median income falls during a recession, the threshold falls as well, and people can become materially poorer without the indicator capturing it. An absolute poverty threshold, indexed to a basket of goods, would provide a more honest picture of lived conditions.\nDemand methodological transparency. Any study on effective tax rates should specify whether it includes unrealized capital gains and present both figures. Any study on inequality should present both relative and absolute indicators. If these requirements were applied, half of the headlines about taxing the ultra-rich would need to be rewritten \u2014 and half of complacent liberal op-eds as well.\nConclusion\nThe problem is not primarily that some people are very rich. It is that too many people are still too poor. Confusing these two diagnoses means designing policies to address the wrong problem \u2014 with real costs for those they claim to protect.\nThe inequality debate lacks neither data nor indignation. It lacks clarity about what is being measured, in the name of which values, and toward which objectives. This clarity is not a technical matter. It is a democratic requirement. It applies to all sides \u2014 including the one writing these lines.<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wealth\/inequalities-santi\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31401\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31385\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31385\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/financial-opacity\/european-banks-the-middle-east-risk-blind-spot\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/risque-moyen-orient-banques.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/risque-moyen-orient-banques.png?w=1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/risque-moyen-orient-banques.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/risque-moyen-orient-banques.png?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/risque-moyen-orient-banques.png?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/risque-moyen-orient-banques.png?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w\" alt=\"European Banks: The Middle East Risk Blind Spot\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31385\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/financial-opacity\/european-banks-the-middle-east-risk-blind-spot\"  class=\"title\">European Banks: The Middle East Risk Blind Spot<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 26, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">An Organized Opacity\nThe fog is not an accident. It is an architecture. For the past forty-eight hours, two camps have clashed over French banks\u2019 exposure to the Middle East with almost comical symmetry: some brandish \u20ac132 billion as proof of impending apocalypse, others dismiss it as a harmless accounting artifact. Both have arguments. Neither is asking the right question.\nBecause the issue is neither the magnitude of the figure nor its supposed benignity. It is the impossibility, for anyone \u2014 citizen, parliamentarian, analyst \u2014 to access a faithful picture of risk at the precise moment when such clarity becomes essential. And within this opacity, the danger is not even where the debate is looking for it.\nWhat the numbers say\nThe European Banking Authority has published its Risk Dashboard Q4 2025. Direct exposure of EU banks to the Middle East stands at \u20ac132 billion, including \u20ac60.8 billion for France (46%). Relative to the sector\u2019s \u20ac29.1 trillion in assets, that is less than 0.5%. CET1 stands at 16.3%, non-performing loans at 1.8%, and major French banks posted \u20ac35 billion in profits in 2025.\nTaken in isolation, these indicators are reassuring. And those who decry sensationalism are right on one essential point: exposure is not risk. The European banking system could absorb significantly larger losses without jeopardizing its solvency.\nBut the net figure does not say much either.\nNetting assumes a world that does not exist\nThe EBA publishes gross exposures. Banks publish net figures, after offsetting through collateral \u2014 sovereign securities, guarantees, derivatives. The method is legitimate, compliant with IFRS standards. The differences are considerable: for BNP Paribas, one moves from \u20ac55 billion gross to roughly \u20ac6 billion net.\nThe problem is not the method. It lies in its assumptions.\nWhat is missing is not data, but assumptions. Netting assumes that markets function normally. That collateral remains liquid. That flows do not freeze. That the Strait of Hormuz does not close.\nIn times of stress, the value of collateral is no longer a market price; it is a conjecture.\nNetting protects against credit risk. Not against liquidity risk.\nAnd it is liquidity that kills \u2014 quickly, without warning.\nThe only figure that matters in a crisis \u2014 net exposure after stress on collateral \u2014 is published by no one.\nThe same illusion applies geographically. A sovereign rating measures repayment capacity in calm conditions. It does not model logistical disruption, cross-sanctions, or a regional energy shock. This does not mean banks ignore these risks. It means the public has no way to assess them.\nThe real scandal\nThe problem is not the level of exposure. It is the absence of synthesis.\nThe EBA publishes gross figures, with a lag.Banks publish net figures, according to their own methods.The gap can reach a factor of ten.No one reconciles them.\nThe result is an organized blind spot: everyone publishes a fragment of reality, no one makes it intelligible.\nIn that space, perceptions are manufactured: banks choose their narrative, the regulator avoids taking a definitive stance, the media simplify. And public debate oscillates between panic and denial.\nWhen Fran\u00e7ois Villeroy de Galhau asserts that financial stability is \u201cnot at risk,\u201d he is probably right. But an assertion unsupported by verifiable data no longer generates trust. Since 2008, solidity is no longer proclaimed. It is demonstrated.\nWhat should exist\nThe supervisor faces a real dilemma: too much transparency can amplify a crisis. But this dilemma does not justify the current opacity. On the contrary, it calls for aggregated, standardized, intelligible transparency.\nOthers have understood this. The Federal Reserve publishes detailed stress test results. The Bank of England regularly presents extreme scenarios. These exercises are not real-time. They are readable, comparable, debatable.\nEurope could do the same.\nWhat is missing is not an additional flow of data, but a public synthesis: a dashboard reconciling gross, net, and stressed net exposures under explicit scenarios. A document a parliamentarian can read, a journalist can verify, a citizen can understand.\nThe problem is not active concealment. It is institutional: no body is mandated to produce this readability.\nThe risk that matters\nWhile the debate focuses on \u20ac132 billion, the real risk is shifting elsewhere. The EBA highlights this: second-round effects are the primary threat. A persistently high oil price, weakened growth, compressed margins \u2014 these diffuse mechanisms are what undermine balance sheets.\nThe next banking stress, if it occurs, will not stem from a sovereign default in the Gulf. It will emerge from a fabric of European companies, gradually weakened, increasingly unable to meet their obligations.\nFrench banks are solid. The data show it.\nBut as long as that solidity remains partially opaque, every published figure becomes a source of confusion.\nThe problem is not the risk.\nIt is that it remains, structurally, difficult to see.<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/financial-opacity\/european-banks-the-middle-east-risk-blind-spot\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31385\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31362\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31362\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/sanctions-circumvention\/the-west-has-made-oil-uncontrollable\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/petrole.png?fit=1024%2C1536&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/petrole.png?w=1024&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/petrole.png?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/petrole.png?resize=683%2C1024&ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/petrole.png?resize=768%2C1152&ssl=1 768w\" alt=\"The West Has Made Oil Uncontrollable\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31362\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/sanctions-circumvention\/the-west-has-made-oil-uncontrollable\"  class=\"title\">The West Has Made Oil Uncontrollable<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 24, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">In seeking to cap Russian oil prices, the G7 set in motion a series of dynamics it no longer fully controls: sanctions evasion, reconfigured trade flows, more rigid demand, and financial fragmentation. The oil market has entered a more unstable phase, where traditional regulatory tools are losing effectiveness.\n\nA Sophisticated Geoeconomic Weapon\u2026 Built on a Fragile Assumption\nThe G7 price cap on Russian oil was, at its conception, a remarkably sophisticated piece of geoeconomic engineering. The idea was to allow crude to keep flowing in order to avoid a global supply shock, while forcing Moscow to sell under unfavorable conditions. A form of financial jiu-jitsu based on a central assumption: that Russia would remain dependent on Western maritime insurance, brokerage, and financing systems.\nAs long as that dependency held, the mechanism could function. But Moscow did not force the lock\u2014it bypassed it by changing routes.\n\nThe Quiet Reconfiguration of Oil Flows\nOver the past two years, a significant portion of the global tanker fleet has been reshaped. Aging vessels have been acquired by intermediary entities, often registered between Dubai, Mumbai, and Hong Kong. Flags of convenience, alternative reinsurance structures, fragmented logistics chains: a parallel infrastructure has gradually emerged.\nAccording to estimates that vary significantly across sources, between half and two-thirds of Russian crude exports are now routed through these alternative channels. Finance has followed a similar path: increased use of alternative currencies, bilateral agreements, and settlement mechanisms outside SWIFT.\nThis network\u2014sometimes referred to as the \u201cDragonbear\u201d\u2014no longer belongs to theoretical discussions. It now constitutes an operational architecture for circumvention.\nThe West designed a system suited to a world organized around a few critical chokepoints. That world, however, is now fragmented and no longer conforms to that logic.\n\nWhen Strategy Meets Its Own Constraints\nWashington attempted to reinforce the mechanism by lowering the cap to $44 in January 2026. Yet at the same time, other dynamics reduced its effectiveness.\nGeopolitical tensions in the Middle East contributed to pushing Brent crude prices close to $100. In this context, on March 6, the U.S. Treasury issued a temporary waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian crude without price restrictions.\nRussian crude prices then temporarily reached levels close to $100, in direct contradiction with the announced cap.\nThis situation highlights a structural constraint: it is difficult to pursue multiple coercive strategies across different theaters simultaneously without diluting their individual effectiveness. The waiver is not an anomaly\u2014it reflects an adjustment required by overlapping strategic priorities.\n\nA Global Demand That Has Become Less Price-Sensitive\nOn the demand side, a more subtle but equally important shift is underway.\nIn 2008, when oil reached $147 per barrel, rising energy prices had a significant impact on household budgets, particularly in the United States. Global demand then declined noticeably: the system responded.\nEighteen years later, economic conditions have evolved substantially. Median incomes have risen in advanced economies as well as in several emerging markets. In China, urban wages have increased significantly; in India, they have at least doubled.\nAs a result, price sensitivity thresholds have changed. High oil prices no longer have the same proportional impact on household budgets. The oil market no longer has a single tipping point, but rather multiple thresholds, all shifted upward.\nThe corrective mechanism still exists, but it now activates at levels that make it harder to trigger without causing broader macroeconomic disruption.\n\nAn Interdependence Between Supply, Demand, and Asian Arbitrage\nIt is the interaction between these dynamics that defines the new market reality.\nRussia\u2019s ability to sustain exports depends in part on the capacity of major importers\u2014particularly in Asia\u2014to absorb these flows. But this relationship is not purely mechanical.\nIt also relies on industrial arbitrage, especially in refining, on structural price differentials between crude grades, and on geopolitical strategies aimed at diversifying supply sources.\nThe rising prosperity of certain importing countries facilitates these arbitrages. It does not fully explain them, but it is a necessary enabling condition. Without this economic base, alternative trade routes would be far less viable.\nIn this context, public policy measures\u2014subsidies, strategic reserve releases, and various stabilization mechanisms\u2014help smooth short-term shocks while delaying deeper structural adjustments.\n\nEurope Facing Its Own Contradictions\nA particularly illustrative case concerns refined products derived from Russian crude.\nSome importing countries purchase crude oil, refine it domestically, and then export refined products to international markets, including Europe. In this way, part of the volumes indirectly linked to Russian exports re-enters European supply chains in refined form.\nIn this framework, sanction strategies confront a broader economic reality: the deep interdependence of global energy value chains.\nAt the aggregate level, constraints remain binding. Major Asian importers account for a significant share of global demand. In such a concentrated market, national strategies have limited impact when confronted with systemic global equilibria.\n\nA Gradual Fragmentation of the Monetary System\nBeyond oil, another dynamic is emerging: the gradual evolution of monetary circuits.\nThe increased use of the dollar as a sanctioning instrument has encouraged some actors to explore alternative settlement mechanisms. However, these alternatives remain constrained by structural limitations: lack of convertibility in certain currencies, insufficient market depth, and fragmented financial infrastructure.\nThis transition is unlikely to be rapid or uniform. It will unfold gradually, through the accumulation of parallel practices rather than abrupt substitution. Its pace will depend as much on political decisions as on the ability of alternative systems to provide liquidity and stability.\n\nA Market Without Shock Absorbers\nIf current trends persist\u2014rigid supply due to prolonged underinvestment, stronger producer coordination, and demand supported by rising incomes\u2014then the historical equilibrium of the oil market may be durably altered.\nThe range of price fluctuations could widen, with more pronounced periods of stress and sharper corrections. In a system where traditional shock absorbers are weakened, adjustments occur later\u2014but with greater intensity.\nPublic policies aimed at absorbing each shock in the short term may smooth immediate effects while potentially reinforcing longer-term imbalances.\n\nEscaping the Trap\nThere is only one structural path out: extracting kilowatt-hours from oil.\nThis is not merely an energy transition. It is a shift in power.\nAs long as oil remains central, the market will remain exposed to geopolitical shocks it cannot control. Reducing that dependence means not only lowering price volatility, but also limiting the ability of external actors to impose constraints.\nEvery electric vehicle, every heat pump, every substitution reduces collective exposure to the trap.\nEnergy diversification is no longer a climate objective alone. It is a strategy of sovereignty.<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/sanctions-circumvention\/the-west-has-made-oil-uncontrollable\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31362\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31350\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31350\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/dynastic-succession\/the-pasdaran-in-robes\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pasdaran-robe.png?fit=1024%2C1536&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pasdaran-robe.png?w=1024&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pasdaran-robe.png?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pasdaran-robe.png?resize=683%2C1024&ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/pasdaran-robe.png?resize=768%2C1152&ssl=1 768w\" alt=\"The Pasdaran in Robe\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31350\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/dynastic-succession\/the-pasdaran-in-robes\"  class=\"title\">The Pasdaran in Robe<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 18, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">How Iran has just revealed the naked truth of its own regime \u2014 and why it changes everything\nThere are moments in the history of regimes when the mask does not fall under external pressure. It falls through internal accident \u2014 because a crisis forces a decision too quickly, in the dark, without time to maintain appearances. On March 8, 2026, Iran experienced such a moment. That night, in a secret meeting in Qom, under bombardment, the Assembly of Experts appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. In less than ten days, the regime resolved the one question it had never dared to settle publicly. And in doing so, it said \u2014 involuntarily, irreversibly \u2014 what it truly is.\n\nThe Founding Imposture\nTo understand what has just happened, one must return to the grammar of Iranian power. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has rested on a structuring fiction: the Supreme Leader is not a monarch. He is a cleric \u2014 a faqih, an Islamic jurist \u2014 whose authority derives from mastery of sacred texts, not from birth. That is precisely what distinguished the Khomeinist revolution from the Pahlavi monarchy it overthrew. Power was not transmitted by blood. It was earned through religious scholarship.\nThis is precisely why a father-to-son succession was, until that night in March, considered unthinkable even within the system itself. For years, Mojtaba faced significant resistance within Iran\u2019s clerical and political establishment. The Islamic Republic had been explicitly founded to avoid the appearance of hereditary rule that characterized Iran under the Shah, and many within the regime viewed the prospect of dynastic succession as fundamentally incompatible with its ideological foundations. Under normal circumstances \u2014 had Ali Khamenei died of natural causes, after a prolonged institutional endgame \u2014 Mojtaba would not have been selected.\nWhat has occurred, therefore, is not a mere succession. It is the manifest transformation of Velayat-e Faqih into hereditary power: the son succeeding the father at the head of an anti-monarchical dictatorship that once claimed to have eradicated dynastic rule forever.\nThe Islamic Republic has just made itself into a Shah. It cannot unmake that.\nBut this is not yet the central point. For Mojtaba is not merely a son succeeding his father. He is something more precise, more revealing \u2014 and infinitely more destabilizing for the regime\u2019s internal structure.\n\nThe Pasdaran in Robes: Anatomy of a Silent Takeover\nHere is what almost no commentator states plainly. Mojtaba Khamenei is not a cleric who relies on the Revolutionary Guards. He is a Revolutionary Guard who wears clerical robes.\nThe distinction is not semantic. It is constitutional, institutional, and \u2014 for the regime\u2019s future \u2014 existential.\nMojtaba joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the late 1980s, serving during the final years of the Iran\u2013Iraq War. For over two decades, he cultivated close ties with IRGC commanders, from the Qods Force to the Basij militia and the Guards\u2019 Intelligence Organization. When the U.S. Treasury sanctioned him in 2019, it stated that he worked with Qods and Basij commanders to advance the regime\u2019s regional objectives and its domestic repression. The story of the \u201cHabib Battalion\u201d is central here: a network of Iran\u2013Iraq War veterans who later formed Mojtaba\u2019s inner circle, helping recruit trusted operatives within the IRGC and Basij for the security apparatus built around him.\nWithout the support of the Pasdaran, Mojtaba Khamenei could not have succeeded his father. The crisis merely provided the context in which they could impose what ordinary institutional resistance had previously prevented.\nA member of the Assembly of Experts, Shaykh Mahmoud Rajabi, inadvertently confirmed as much. \u201cThe country\u2019s wartime conditions,\u201d he said, \u201cwere among the most influential factors in selecting the Leader.\u201d This sentence deserves attention. Rajabi is not a liberal critic \u2014 he is an ideologue from the Mesbah-Yazdi circle, rooted in Qom\u2019s hardline seminaries. In phrasing it this way, he revealed what the regime would prefer to conceal: the selection did not proceed from theological judgment. It proceeded from a national security decision. Not the merit of the faqih \u2014 but the urgency of the bunker. Velayat-e Faqih had just confessed its own foundations.\nThis is not a cleric who tamed an army. It is a man of the security apparatus who learned the language of clerics in order to wear their costume. His title of ayatollah, moreover, was formally conferred the very night of his appointment, broadcast live on state media, in what resembled less a religious recognition than a coronation.\nOne does not become an ayatollah overnight. One is crowned.\n\nSeparation of Powers as Safeguard \u2014 and Illusion\nSince 1979, the architecture of the Iranian regime has rested on a productive tension between two poles: the clergy and the Pasdaran. The Supreme Leader, a cleric at the apex, arbitrated between them. This duality was exhausting, conflictual, often paralyzing \u2014 but it was also the source of the regime\u2019s resilience. It prevented any single apparatus from devouring the others.\nToday, the Pasdaran control roughly a quarter of Iran\u2019s economy. They command ballistic missiles, drones, proxy networks across the Middle East, and the machinery of internal repression. What they did not have until March 8, 2026, was the turban. Now they have it.\nWith Mojtaba, the arbiter has vanished. The Supreme Leader is no longer above the Pasdaran \u2014 he is their product, their creature, their emanation. For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the two institutional poles have fused in a single person. And this fusion is not a strengthening: it is a structural catastrophe disguised as consolidation.\nWhy? Because the duality was not a bug. It was the system\u2019s self-regulating mechanism. By eliminating it, the regime has just lost its primary internal pressure valve. All the tensions that once accumulated between clerical orthodoxy and the Pasdaran\u2019s militarized economic ambitions now have no institutional space in which to resolve. They will seek an outlet elsewhere.\nAnd that elsewhere has a name.\n\nThe Artesh: The Institution That Did Not Merge\nThe Artesh is avowedly apolitical. Its leaders repeatedly affirm loyalty to whatever regime is in place. Unlike the Pasdaran, it does not define itself as a revolutionary institution.\nThis formula \u2014 loyal to any regime in place \u2014 now takes on an entirely new meaning. For the question is no longer \u201cIs the Artesh loyal to the regime?\u201d It is: \u201cWhat now constitutes the regime?\u201d\nA leader in a bunker, wounded, invisible, designated through inheritance in an anti-monarchical system, elevated to ayatollah overnight by clerics seeking to survive bombardment \u2014 is that the regime in place? Or a regime in flight?\nIn the aftermath of the Twelve-Day War of June 2025, the Artesh had already gained increased influence in strategic deliberations, its role reinforced by its presence in the Supreme National Security Council and the creation of a National Defense Council. This institutional drift predates the current crisis \u2014 it is not a reaction to it. It is a structural trend.\nHere is the concrete mechanism now unfolding: with a phantom leader, the Artesh absorbing the initial military shock \u2014 its armored and infantry formations serving as the first line of defense \u2014 someone must sign, decide, coordinate on a daily basis. The Pasdaran, now fused with supreme power in Mojtaba\u2019s person, are both too exposed and too targeted to perform this administrative function. They have been designated a terrorist organization by the European Union since January 29, 2026. Their commanders are legitimate targets for Israel and the United States.\nThe Artesh, by contrast, is not blacklisted. It did not massacre protesters in January \u2014 that was the work of the Pasdaran and the Basij. It remains the only Iranian institution still presentable on the international stage. In any postwar scenario, it is the only possible interlocutor.\nThis is not a coup in preparation. It is something subtler and more powerful: a transfer of legitimacy by default.\n\nA Slogan to Be Read as a Political Document\nDuring the successive uprisings of the past decade, one slogan captured popular perceptions of Mojtaba\u2019s rise: \u201cMojtaba, may death prevent you from ruling.\u201d\nThe importance of this slogan lies in what it reveals as the true scandal. The scandal was not corruption, nor even brutality. It was transparency. Iranians understood before analysts what Mojtaba represented: not a legitimate successor within a theocratic system, but proof that the system had never been what it claimed to be. A monarchy invoking God. A security apparatus dressed in Islamic jurisprudence.\nToday, many in Iranian society believe Mojtaba Khamenei is dead \u2014 or at least wish to believe it. This is not denial; it is a political statement. A leader imagined dead before having governed does not yet exist as real authority. And an authority that does not exist as a psychological reality in the minds of those it claims to govern is, in essence, already vacant.\n\nWhat History Teaches About Regimes Built on Opacity\nThere is an empirical rule in political science, rarely stated but almost universally verified: authoritarian regimes do not fall at the height of their brutality. They fall when that brutality loses its internal legitimacy \u2014 when members of the apparatus themselves cease to believe in the narrative that justifies their own violence.\nBy appointing Mojtaba, the regime has told its own soldiers, clerics, and bureaucrats: Velayat-e Faqih was a fiction. What matters is family and security networks. We are not a revolution. We are an armed family enterprise.\nSome already knew this. But knowing it tacitly and hearing it declared officially \u2014 in the language of Islamic law and the Assembly of Experts \u2014 are two different things. Private disillusionment remains silent. Institutionalized disillusionment seeks an exit.\nThat exit, in Iran in March 2026, can take only one form: an institution that did not participate in the imposture. An institution that can claim, tomorrow, that it was not present when the mask fell. An institution whose purpose is not to protect the revolution \u2014 but to defend Iran.\nThe Artesh does not need to seize power. It need only remain standing while the others collapse under the weight of what they have just admitted.\n\nThe Islamic Republic will not die under bombs. It will die from having finally told itself the truth<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/dynastic-succession\/the-pasdaran-in-robes\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31350\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31318\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31318\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/economic-involution\/the-great-zombification-of-capital\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chine.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chine.png?w=1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chine.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chine.png?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chine.png?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chine.png?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w\" alt=\"The Great Zombification of Capital\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31318\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/economic-involution\/the-great-zombification-of-capital\"  class=\"title\">The Great Zombification of Capital<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 15, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">Neijuan, or the Silent Involution Devouring East and West\nThe Chinese have a word for it.\nNeijuan \u2014 awkwardly translated as \u201cinvolution\u201d: intense activity, massive deployment of capital, the appearance of vitality \u2014 and real returns collapsing until the moment they can no longer be concealed.\nBlackRock limits withdrawals. Blue Owl loses a third of its value. In China, industrial profits are collapsing. Analysts speak of \u201cpoor underwriting,\u201d of a \u201crate cycle.\u201d No one pronounces the word. Yet it asserts itself on both sides of the Pacific.\nChina entered it from above: the state directed credit, manufactured overcapacity, exported deflation.\nThe West entered it from below: central banks flooded markets, funds refinanced the unprofitable, valuations survived reality.\nTwo opposing mechanisms. One identical dead end. One identical victim: those who work.\n\nThe Chinese Involution: Direction from Above\nThe word was born in lecture halls. In the early 2010s, Chinese students used it to describe that absurd sensation of working twice as hard to obtain exactly the same result.\nNeijuan first referred to the educational competition of a zero-sum system: one more student at Tsinghua means one fewer elsewhere. It then slipped into economics, because what it described was not a university problem, but a system in which the intensification of effort no longer produces proportional returns.\nIn China, involution is imposed by the state: savings channeled toward investments with diminishing returns, massive overcapacity, persistent deflation.\nThe data for 2026 confirm it: growth at 4.5\u20135 percent, margins in electric vehicles falling from 7.8 percent to 4.4 percent, some manufacturers already in net losses. Downstream, the engineer accepts the \u201c996\u201d \u2014 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week \u2014 simply to keep his job in a saturated market.\nNeijuan is first experienced in bodies before it appears in statistics.\nYet one must resist an overly convenient symmetry. China\u2019s overcapacity in electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels is not an industrial accident; it forms part of a twenty-year strategy of domination.\nBeijing accepts zero margins today in order to kill competition tomorrow. Involution there is as much a deliberate instrument as it is a symptom. What the West experiences as crisis, China may experience as geopolitical investment.\n\nWestern Involution: Illusion from Below\nThe West does not only import cheap goods \u2014 it also imports downward pressure on its real returns.\nPost-2008 policies allowed structurally unprofitable companies to survive through perpetual refinancing. The private credit market has doubled since 2019 to reach $1.3 trillion. Defaults are rising, yields are falling from 10 percent to 6\u20138 percent, and withdrawals exceed available liquidity.\nThe dominant strategy assumed perpetual liquidity. It was not perpetual. It was merely abundant. That is not the same thing.\nIn France, a thirty-something executive spends 35 percent of net income on housing \u2014 compared with 18 percent for the previous generation.\nA degree no longer buys access to capital; it buys the right to remain in the race. What Graeber called \u201cbullshit jobs\u201d \u2014 positions whose holders themselves doubt their real usefulness \u2014 is not a sociological anecdote: it is the symptom of an economy that produces activity without value.\nChina\u2019s 996 and the Western bullshit job are not opposites. They are two faces of the same exhaustion.\nGDP grows, assets soar. Certainly. For the person who works without owning capital, growth remains a story read in newspapers, never felt in a bank account.\nThis is not a cyclical injustice \u2014 it is the social signature of involution.\n\n\u201cPlanning by Proxy\u201d: Kaminska\u2019s Verdict\nIzabella Kaminska describes the Western system as \u201cplanning by proxy\u201d: institutional incentives have dictated the allocation of capital in place of genuine profitability.\n\u201cThe only difference lies in the source of the funding. Chinese repression draws on the deposits of households trapped within the banking system; Western private credit draws on institutional capital attracted by promises of stable returns.\u201d\nIn both cases, each additional unit of capital buys less productivity \u2014 and more time.\nTwo systems opposed in principle. The same pathology in their outcomes. The same experience in their bodies.\n\nToward a Necessary Restructuring\nThe turbulence in private credit is not the cause. It is the collision between a decade of involution and the sudden demand for real returns.\nRestructuring will require naming what no one dares to articulate: that post-Covid office real estate will not recover its former valuations; that certain sectors \u2014 overcapacity logistics, physical retail, parts of \u201cfintech\u201d \u2014 are zombies living on borrowed time.\nPolitical choices will be brutal: who absorbs the loss? Pension funds \u2014 future retirees? States \u2014 taxpayers? Companies \u2014 employees?\nIf involution has a human face \u2014 the exhausted Chinese graduate, the Western worker growing poorer within a rich economy \u2014 restructuring cannot be merely accounting. It will have to restore meaning to effort, and admit that there was never a plan.\n\nInvolution is not a Chinese pathology imported abroad. It is the delayed consequence of a capitalism that for too long confused liquidity with prosperity, activity with value, asset growth with real wealth.\nThe question that remains \u2014 and that no one in trading floors or ministries truly wishes to ask \u2014 is this: if effort no longer produces proportional returns, neither for funds nor for citizens, what remains to make people want to keep playing the game?\n\nSources\nThis article draws on the analysis of Izabella Kaminska (The Blind Spot, March 2026), Goldman Sachs data on Chinese growth in 2026, and PIMCO reports on U.S. private credit.<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/economic-involution\/the-great-zombification-of-capital\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31318\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31308\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31308\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/swiss-neutrality\/switzerland-a-negotiable-power\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CH.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CH.png?w=1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CH.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CH.png?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CH.png?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CH.png?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w\" alt=\"Switzerland, a Negotiable Power?\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31308\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/swiss-neutrality\/switzerland-a-negotiable-power\"  class=\"title\">Switzerland, a Negotiable Power?<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 11, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">How a Prosperous State Turned Its Neutrality into an Adjustment Variable\nSwitzerland is experiencing the most serious existential crisis of its modern history. What was once presented as a singular success story\u2014armed neutrality, admired mediation, insolent prosperity\u2014has turned into a spectacle of impotence and submission.\nBy 2026, the verdict is unequivocal: Bern no longer speaks to the world; it apologizes for existing.\nMore troubling still: Switzerland does not have a bad foreign policy. It no longer has one at all. It no longer defines a line; it absorbs shocks. It no longer pursues a vision; it manages risks.\nOne will object, at once, that neutrality has always been a calculation. That even Dunant himself was a pragmatist, not an idealist. That the Confederation never claimed heroism\u2014only usefulness. It is an honest objection, one that deserves to be taken seriously before being overturned. For what distinguishes sovereign calculation from constrained calculation is not its content\u2014it is its origin.\nFor two centuries, Switzerland chose its neutrality. It could have done otherwise, and it was precisely that choice which endowed it with moral authority. What it experiences today is different: it endures its neutrality\u2014while optimizing it. This shift from chosen sovereignty to negotiated sovereignty is the real rupture. Everything else flows from it.\n\nTHE DIPLOMACY OF THE GOLD BAR\nThe episode of the summer 2025 tariffs is not merely a commercial dispute; it is a structural revelation.\nBy imposing a 39 percent tariff rate, Donald Trump demonstrated that Swiss exceptionalism no longer exists.\nThat President Karin Keller-Sutter was publicly mocked for her supposed \u201caggressiveness\u201d is humiliating.That Switzerland responded with gestures of financial conciliation is even more so.\nThe 200 billion dollars of investments promised to the United States by 2028 were presented as a pragmatic compromise. In reality, they mark a strategic turning point. By agreeing to invest such a sum\u2014under threat\u2014Switzerland did not merely save its exports; it validated a precedent. Its sovereignty is no longer an intangible principle but an adjustable variable within an asymmetric negotiation.\nA sovereignty that accepts being priced ceases to be sovereign; it becomes a contractual option.\nSwitzerland no longer negotiates a strategic relationship. It negotiates its exposure to risk. This is no longer diplomacy. It is asset management.\n\nTHE PHANTOM MEDIATION\nIn February 2026, during the indirect discussions in Geneva on the Iranian file, the role of the Swiss mediator amounted, according to several diplomatic sources, to providing a room and guaranteeing the confidentiality of exchanges. Not to formulate a proposal. Not to shape the outcome. To open a door\u2014and remain in the corridor.\nAfter the failure of these talks and the American\u2013Israeli strikes that followed, an obvious fact returned with brutal clarity: Switzerland no longer influences major decisions.\nThe criticisms voiced by Gerhard Pfister and Franziska Roth do not merely concern a failed diplomatic sequence. They target a system. Pfister, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is explicit: the \u201cgood offices\u201d Switzerland claims are, in his own words, \u201cvery bad services rendered to the Iranian people.\u201d Roth, a member of the Socialist Party, argues that \u201cthe policy of appeasement we have pursued so far leads nowhere.\u201d\nA diplomacy that offers a platform without producing leverage. The criticism is cross-party. It is therefore structural.\nThe \u201cgood offices\u201d remain. The influence has dissipated.\nWhy? Because influence requires the willingness to assume risk. Switzerland now optimizes risk\u2014it no longer bears it.\n\nTHE VERDICT OF OMAN\nThere is a counterexample that should sting Bern more than the mockery coming from Washington.\nIran did not choose Geneva. It chose Muscat. In February 2026, at the explicit request of the Iranian delegation, the indirect negotiations were relocated to the Sultanate of Oman\u2014a petroleum state with no democratic tradition, no Red Cross, no centuries of proclaimed neutrality. In diplomatic circles, Oman is now described as the \u201cSwitzerland of the Middle East.\u201d\nThe title has moved. Not by accident, but by the sovereign decision of an interlocutor who assessed his options and discarded Bern.\nThis is not a failed diplomatic episode. It is a verdict. When your interlocutors replace you, they do not comment on your foreign policy\u2014they conclude it.\nA state that merely endures while optimizing becomes invisible in the moments that matter. History does not remember wealth managers; it remembers those who took a position.\n\nNEUTRALITY AS FINANCIAL ARBITRAGE\nThis is where the whole pattern becomes clear.\nSwiss neutrality is no longer a moral posture inherited from 1815. It has become a contemporary financial arbitrage.\nFaced with the war in Ukraine, Bern froze assets while limiting its military commitments. It protects its commercial model while benefiting from the Western security architecture.\nThe most damning demonstration came in the past week. Switzerland paid 650 million francs to the United States for the acquisition of Patriot missiles. Those missiles were then consumed by Washington in the war against Iran\u2014the very country with which Bern simultaneously presented itself as the privileged channel of communication. Their delivery is now delayed by at least five years. Switzerland financed the weaponry used against the very interlocutor it claimed to mediate with.\nOne could hardly illustrate more clearly what Swiss neutrality has become: double-entry bookkeeping.\nThis mechanism produces a new perception: Switzerland maximizes its economic flexibility while externalizing its strategic costs. The reproach formulated by Donald Trump\u2014\u201cYou exploit our generosity\u201d\u2014is brutal. Yet it reveals a real transformation: neutrality is now interpreted as opportunistic optimization.\nSovereignty has become calculable. Neutrality has become negotiable. Diplomacy has become accounting.\n\nTHE QUESTION EVERYONE AVOIDS\nSwitzerland\u2019s problem is not moral. It is conceptual.\nNo one is asking Switzerland to deploy armored divisions on the Dnieper. No one is asking it to choose a side in every conflict that tears the world apart. What is being asked of it is to have a vision of the world that is not a balance sheet\u2014a line that is recognizable, defensible, and coherent over time.\nThis is not a demand for heroism. It is a demand for credibility.\nA state can be neutral. A state can be cautious. A state can be prosperous. But a state cannot indefinitely turn its sovereignty into an adjustment variable without altering the very perception of its reliability.\nA sovereignty that accepts being priced ceases to be sovereign.\nAs long as Switzerland treats its foreign policy as a mechanism for protecting a model rather than as the expression of a worldview, it will remain peripheral in decisive moments.\nWatching the world burn with a gold bar in one hand and a petition of principle in the other is not a strategy.\nIt is wealth management. And wealth managers are forgotten by history.<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/swiss-neutrality\/switzerland-a-negotiable-power\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31308\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31291\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31291\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/leadership-decapitation\/khamenei-iran-2\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/chateau-de-billets.jpg?fit=800%2C582&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/chateau-de-billets.jpg?w=800&ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/chateau-de-billets.jpg?resize=300%2C218&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/chateau-de-billets.jpg?resize=768%2C559&ssl=1 768w\" alt=\"Kill the leader, create the worst enemy\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31291\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/leadership-decapitation\/khamenei-iran-2\"  class=\"title\">Kill the leader, create the worst enemy<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 10, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">The Trap of the Perfect Strike\nThe father was killed. The wife was killed. The child was killed. During negotiations. And now we wait for the successor to be reasonable.\nIs that the calculation, the strategy? Eliminate the supreme leader at the beginning of the conflict, hope for a more pliable successor, and then go home with a clean victory?\nAn appealing theory\u2014clear, elegant\u2014and wrong.\nNo successor survives\u2014politically or physically\u2014by negotiating immediately after the liquidation of his predecessor.\nNot because of ideology, nor out of a spirit of vengeance, even if that desire is indeed there, visceral and inevitable.\nBut because of pure mechanics, the arithmetic of power. Every authoritarian regime rests on a single axiom: the one who rules cannot appear weak. Not before the external enemy, but above all before the internal factions that observe, calculate, and wait for the first opportunity to replace him.\nHistory leaves no ambiguity.\nMuammar Gaddafi shot in a drainage ditch in October 2011: Libya did not produce a moderate successor, but two rival governments, six major militias, and a slave market documented by the United Nations.\nSaddam Hussein hanged in 2006: Iraq gave birth to Islamic State.\nMojtaba Khamenei has barely taken his place when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps must scrutinize his words, his tone, his hesitations, his cadence. In regimes where succession does not pass through the ballot box, legitimacy is proven in only one way: through hardness.\nThere is an additional layer\u2014more intimate, more irreducible. The strike of February 28 did not only kill his father, Ali Khamenei. It also killed his mother. His wife. His son. His sister.\nThis man will therefore not govern with the abstract burden of succession, but with the fresh grief of a family liquidation. This man will not be available for diplomacy.\nThe West regularly confuses the summit with the system. \u201cEliminate Khamenei as one would cut off the head of a snake,\u201d people said. Except that Iran is less a snake than an institutional hydra\u2014pasdaran, clergy, networks of influence\u2014each with its own interests and logic, and which did not wait for Khamenei to exist.\nThe Supreme Leader in Iran does not merely command these structures: he serves them. As they have no interest in moderation, he escalates\u2014not out of inclination, but because he has no choice.\nThe paradox of the \u201cperfect strike\u201d is that it manufactures exactly the worst possible adversary. It takes a man who might perhaps have sought dialogue and turns him into a leader for whom compromise means political death. It takes a weakened regime and provides it with the one resource it lacked: a legitimate cause\u2014revenge\u2014universally understood, universally mobilizing.\nThe history of leadership decapitations in wartime has a cruel coherence. In the vast majority of documented cases, they have not shortened a conflict by eliminating the supreme leader in its first weeks.\nWashington and Tel Aviv have forgotten that geopolitics is not a game of chess in which one removes a key piece to win the match. It is a game where every piece removed creates two new ones\u2014more enraged, less predictable, determined not to end like the previous one.\nThere is a word to describe repeating the same action while hoping for a different result. But it does not belong to the vocabulary of strategy.\nKhomeini to Michel, at Neauphle-le-Ch\u00e2teau, October 1978:\n&#8220;Do you realize that you and I are sixty years apart! You remind me so much of my dear son Mostafa, who died almost a year ago to the day. Your presence, Michel, brings me serenity and encouragement in the fulfillment of my destiny.&#8221;\nA Levantine Youth, Chapter 37, A Refined Man<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/leadership-decapitation\/khamenei-iran-2\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31291\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31254\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31254\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/financial-sanctions\/when-tehran-bombs-its-banker\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dubai-iran.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dubai-iran.png?w=1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dubai-iran.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dubai-iran.png?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dubai-iran.png?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dubai-iran.png?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w\" alt=\"When Tehran Bombs Its Banker\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31254\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/financial-sanctions\/when-tehran-bombs-its-banker\"  class=\"title\">When Tehran Bombs Its Banker<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 7, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">Dubai never claimed to be neutral. It claimed to be indifferent. A crucial distinction. For forty years, the United Arab Emirates allowed Iranian capital to pass through without asking inconvenient questions. It was not complicity. It was business. A perfectly rational model: taking a commission on the oxygen of a suffocated economy.\nThe numbers are now public. In 2024, according to the U.S. Treasury, $9 billion linked to Iran\u2019s clandestine financial activity passed through Emirati companies \u2014 62% of it directly derived from Iranian oil sales routed through Dubai. Nine billion. Annually. And that figure represents only what could be traced.\nThis system worked because it suited everyone. Washington could sanction Tehran while knowing the pressure would remain tolerable. The Revolutionary Guards could finance Hezbollah and the Houthis. Abu Dhabi collected the commissions. The equilibrium was not fragile. It was structural.\nThen Iran decided to bomb Dubai International Airport.\nSince February 28, 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles, and 541 drones have been intercepted over the United Arab Emirates. Debris fell on the Fairmont Palm. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citigroup ordered their teams to work remotely. Dubai International \u2014 the busiest airport in the world \u2014 fell silent. Supermarkets were stripped bare.\nIran did not attack an enemy. It attacked its banker\nThe response is now on the table. According to the Wall Street Journal, Abu Dhabi is considering freezing the assets of Iranian shell companies, seizing vessels from the shadow fleet, and subjecting informal exchange offices \u2014 those discreet arteries through which Tehran still breathes \u2014 to comprehensive inspections. No final decision has been taken. But the mere fact that the warning has been transmitted to Tehran already constitutes a historic rupture.\nBecause this is what changes everything: the freeze would not come from Washington. It would come from Abu Dhabi. This is not a sanction imposed from outside. It is a divorce initiated from within. The difference is abyssal. Iran circumvented American sanctions precisely through the UAE. If the UAE closes the tap itself, there is no longer any circumvention. There is no longer any door.\nExperts who have followed the Iranian economy for years are unequivocal. Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, director of Bourse &amp; Bazaar, says it plainly: the UAE is \u201cIran\u2019s most important gateway to the global economy.\u201d Andreas Krieg of King\u2019s College London is even more precise: freezing accounts linked to the Revolutionary Guards would be \u201cthe most important non-military tool the UAE could use against Iran.\u201d\nIran knew this. It did it anyway\nThis is where the strategic enigma lies. One can understand a risky decision. It is harder to understand a suicidal one. Tehran possessed a rare asset in a world of financial blockades: real, functional, daily access to global markets. Such an asset cannot be rebuilt in a few months. It was constructed over four decades of mutual discretion, profitable silences, and well-understood interests on both sides.\nSix days of drones were enough to settle the account.\nFor the UAE, the turning point is painful but readable. Dubai built its reputation on a promise: to be the safest city in the most unstable region in the world. That promise is now cracked. Bloomberg puts it bluntly: there is no way back. The question is no longer whether Dubai will remain a global financial hub. The question is at what price it will remain one \u2014 and under what geopolitical conditions.\nThe realignment is underway. By freezing Iranian assets, Abu Dhabi would not only punish the aggressor. It would send a signal to Washington, to Tel Aviv, and to the hedge funds still hesitating to reopen their offices. It would signal that it has chosen its side \u2014 not out of ideology, but out of calculation.\nIran has not only lost access to markets. It has lost something rarer: an interlocutor that was not its enemy. In a world of total sanctions, that was the only luxury that truly mattered.\nIt has just destroyed it itself.\n&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;\nWhat Khomeini Told Me in 1978\n&nbsp;\nI didn&#8217;t read Iran in books. I heard it from his mouth.\nIt was in Neauphle-le-Ch\u00e2teau, a few weeks before the world tipped over. I was fifteen years old. I was brought into a room with no chairs \u2014 just rugs, a few dishes. The man across from me spoke an Arabic from another age \u2014 the Arabic of the Quran, not the streets. He placed his hand on my knee. He looked at me steadily.\n&#8220;It is I who will write for the next two centuries the history of the entire Middle East. The chain reaction has already begun.&#8221;\nHe told me he would protect the Shia of Lebanon \u2014 despised, invisible, whose faces I knew from the women who worked in our homes. He would call them to rise, from Beirut to Baghdad, from Bahrain to Sanaa. &#8220;You will see how the Shia will become the most powerful force in your country. They will be the Party of God&#8221; &#8211; Hezbollah.\nThis was not prophecy. It was a plan.\nToday, Khamenei is dead. Iran is at war. Hezbollah is firing from Lebanon. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. And the world looks on in shock at what this man had announced to me in that small house on the outskirts of Paris, in 1978.\nUne jeunesse levantine is not a memoir. \nIt is the only firsthand account of a conversation with the architect of everything now unfolding before our eyes.<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/financial-sanctions\/when-tehran-bombs-its-banker\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31254\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-slide\" style=\"\"><div class=\"insideframe\"><div id=\"wplp_box_top_20900_31243\" class=\"wpcu-front-box top equalHeightImg\" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_left_20900_31243\" class=\"wpcu-front-box left wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 30%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/strategic-attrition\/bahrein-chiia\"  class=\"thumbnail\"><span class=\"img_cropper\" style=\"margin-right:4px;margin-bottom:4px;max-width:100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bahrein.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1\" style=\"aspect-ratio:4\/3;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bahrein.png?w=1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bahrein.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bahrein.png?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bahrein.png?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bahrein.png?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w\" alt=\"Bahrain: The Silent Test of American Power\" class=\"wplp_thumb\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_right_20900_31243\" class=\"wpcu-front-box right wpcu-custom-position\" style=\"width: 70%\"><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/strategic-attrition\/bahrein-chiia\"  class=\"title\">Bahrain: The Silent Test of American Power<\/a><span class=\"date\">March 4, 2026<\/span><span class=\"text\"><span style=\"max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\">I grew up in Lebanon, in close contact with Shiite communities from whom I learned early on that they could not be reduced either to a confessional label or to an external allegiance. I later lived in Bahrain. What I describe here, I observed from the inside.\n\nBahrain does not threaten through conflagration. It tests through accumulation.\nThe strategic risk in Bahrain is not a sudden revolution. It is slow attrition.Not a spectacular collapse, but a gradual decomposition that makes the American presence, cycle after cycle, more politically costly and more regionally fragile.\nThis is what Bahrain is testing today: the ability of the American security architecture to absorb an accumulation of tensions without visible rupture.\n\nThe illusion of a threshold\nConventional analysis looks for a tipping point: insurrection, foreign intervention, a major attack against the U.S. Fifth Fleet.\nBut the most plausible scenario is different.\nRegional escalation with Iran. Internal security tightening. Preventive arrests in Shiite strongholds. Regional media amplification. A return to apparent calm.\nThen repetition.\nWith each cycle, stability holds. But the political and social cost rises.\n\nThe mechanism of attrition\nWhen an American strike targets Iran, three mechanical effects appear.\nThe monarchy reaffirms its alignment with Washington. The security apparatus conducts preventive arrests in Sitra or Diraz. Media networks close to Tehran amplify images of detentions and accusations of collusion.\nThis pattern does not produce an explosion. It produces cumulative polarization.\n\nA structural fracture\nBahrain has roughly 1.5 million inhabitants, of whom 60 to 70 percent of citizens are Shiite. Political and security power remains dominated by the Sunni dynasty. This imbalance is not an anomaly \u2014 it is embedded in the system\u2019s functioning.\nSince 2011, the apparatus has consolidated in layers: expanded anti-terror legislation, revocations of nationality, technological surveillance \u2014 with security expenditures now accounting for nearly one fifth of the public budget. A regime that devotes such a share of its resources to containing its own majority no longer governs by consent. It governs by exhaustion. And exhaustion is a costly strategy: fiscally, politically, generationally.\n\nThe budgetary constraint: the invisible breaking point\nUnlike Qatar or the UAE, Bahrain does not possess the reserves that allow social peace to be purchased indefinitely. Its dependence on Saudi subsidies is structural, not cyclical \u2014 and medium-term fiscal projections only reinforce this asymmetry.\nThe breaking point may therefore be budgetary before it is social. An oil shock, a reduction in transfers from Riyadh \u2014 and the internal equation reconfigures abruptly.\nRiyadh pays for Manama\u2019s stability. And what Riyadh finances, Riyadh can condition.\n\nThe decisive role of Riyadh\nSaudi Arabia demonstrated in 2011 its willingness to intervene militarily to preserve the monarchy. Any major crisis would trigger a Saudi reaction even before an American arbitration.\nThis umbrella reduces the risk of rapid collapse. But it automatically transforms internal tension into a Saudi-Iranian issue. By protecting Bahrain, Riyadh ties its own internal equilibrium to that of the island.\nStabilization is guaranteed. Regionalization is almost automatic.\n\nWashington: ignorance or arbitration?\nThe United States does not \u201cdiscover\u201d Bahraini fragility. Congressional reports, diplomatic analyses, historical precedents \u2014 the demographic fracture has long been documented.\nThe reality is colder: Washington does not ignore this vulnerability. It accepts it as a strategic cost in order to maintain the Fifth Fleet and secure the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world\u2019s seaborne oil transits.\nThis is a trade-off, not blindness.\n\nIran: multiplier \u2014 not creator\nIt would be reductive to describe the Shiite opposition as an extension of Tehran. It is predominantly Arab and national in character. Its antagonism is the product of historical exclusion, not foreign instruction.\nNor is it a monolithic bloc. Moderate formations, such as the former Al-Wefaq, long favored institutional dialogue. Their forced dissolution did not extinguish them \u2014 it fragmented and, for some, radicalized them. When moderate interlocutors are eliminated, contestation is not suppressed. Its center of gravity shifts.\nIran operates within this space \u2014 through the media, religious, and digital ecosystem that connects Shiite communities across the region. It exploits existing terrain. It does not manufacture it.\nThat is precisely what makes the situation harder to defuse: the contestation does not originate from outside.\n\nThe Abraham Accords: one layer too many\nBy normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, Bahrain added a symbolic dimension that Manama may have underestimated. For a significant portion of the population, the monarchy now aligns itself with what the regional narrative portrays as the historic adversary of Arab and Muslim causes.\nThis burden is not measured in opinion polls. It is read in sermons, in networks \u2014 and it reactivates with every regional incident, turning each new crisis into confirmation of an already entrenched narrative of humiliation.\nThe Abraham Accords brought Bahrain tangible diplomatic utility. They also carried an internal legitimacy cost that no one quantifies.\nEach layer of tension \u2014 confessional, budgetary, security, symbolic \u2014 accumulates atop the previous one. That is how attrition works: not through rupture, but through sedimentation.\n\nWhat Bahrain reveals\nThe system can endure. Riyadh guarantees regime survival. The security apparatus is consolidated. The American base is protected.\nThe risk, therefore, is not collapse. The risk is that each escalation cycle makes the American presence more politically visible, more regionally costly, more dependent on Riyadh, more symbolically exposed.\nThrough accumulation, the military platform may remain strategically viable \u2014 and become politically untenable.\nIn 2025\u20132026, several Gulf capitals are seeking to stabilize relations with Iran. If confrontation intensifies, Bahrain becomes the exception: the point where American military logic meets the region\u2019s most pronounced sociopolitical fragility.\nNot an immediate crisis. A resilience test.\nBahrain does not threaten through conflagration; it tests American resilience. How many cycles of attrition can Washington absorb before regional stability becomes incompatible with its military posture?<\/span><span style=\"margin-left:3px; max-height:2.8em\" class=\"line_limit\"> [...]<\/span><\/span><span class=\"custom_fields\">\n<!-- WPLP Unknown field: Custom_Fields -->\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/strategic-attrition\/bahrein-chiia\"  class=\"read-more\">Read more...<\/a><\/div><\/div><div id=\"wplp_box_bottom_20900_31243\" class=\"wpcu-front-box bottom \" ><div class=\"wplp-box-item\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><div class=\"swiper-button-next\"><\/div><div class=\"swiper-button-prev\"><\/div><div class=\"swiper-pagination\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My new book: \u201cThe testament of a disabused economist\u201d Our duty is to rebuild society on a solid basis, as well as making deep reforms to financial markets and getting rid once and for all of their intrinsic ability to cause harm. We haven\u2019t learned anything from 2008 and have even worsened our exposure, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_crdt_document":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20915","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The testament of a disabused economist - Michel Santi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our duty is to rebuild society on a solid basis, as well as making deep reforms to financial markets and getting rid once and for all of their intrinsic ability to cause harm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The testament of a disabused economist - Michel Santi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our duty is to rebuild society on a solid basis, as well as making deep reforms to financial markets and getting rid once and for all of their intrinsic ability to cause harm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Michel Santi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/michel.santi.economiste\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-01-09T11:20:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/COUV.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@michelsanti1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist\",\"name\":\"The testament of a disabused economist - Michel Santi\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2020\\\/10\\\/COUV.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-10-17T13:05:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-01-09T11:20:47+00:00\",\"description\":\"Our duty is to rebuild society on a solid basis, as well as making deep reforms to financial markets and getting rid once and for all of their intrinsic ability to cause harm\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2020\\\/10\\\/COUV.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2020\\\/10\\\/COUV.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/en\\\/the-testament-of-a-disabused-economist#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Accueil\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The testament of a disabused economist\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/michelsanti.fr\\\/\",\"name\":\"Michel Santi\",\"description\":\"\\\"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. 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It starts\u00a0with his career. Unlike his colleagues, he has not learned life from textbooks and\u00a0econometric models. He has not\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/livre3.jpg?fit=728%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/livre3.jpg?fit=728%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/livre3.jpg?fit=728%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/livre3.jpg?fit=728%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13510,"url":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/splendors-and-miseries-of-economic-conservatism","url_meta":{"origin":20915,"position":1},"title":"Splendors and Miseries of mainstream economics","author":"Michel Santi","date":"April 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This book is the result of my professional experience and personal journey through the intricacies of my profession. I wish to present answers, with the dual objective of restoring economic growth and breaking free from the grip of the financial markets. Understanding the market\u2019s mechanisms is crucial in order to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/splendeurs-et-miseres-du-liberalisme-e1348420571910.jpg?fit=393%2C600&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":24026,"url":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/end-game","url_meta":{"origin":20915,"position":2},"title":"End game ?","author":"Michel Santi","date":"February 12, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 The gold standard was a system where the currency of a country was linked to gold and which could materialize either by defining a certain quantity of metal in exchange for the American dollar, or indirectly through currencies having a fixed parity against the greenback. As early as 1944\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/creation-monetaire.png?fit=1200%2C678&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/creation-monetaire.png?fit=1200%2C678&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/creation-monetaire.png?fit=1200%2C678&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/creation-monetaire.png?fit=1200%2C678&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/creation-monetaire.png?fit=1200%2C678&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13537,"url":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/capitalisme-entre-adultes-consentants","url_meta":{"origin":20915,"position":3},"title":"Pour un capitalisme entre adultes consentants","author":"Michel Santi","date":"February 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"What a shame it is that politicians aren\u2019t historians too! And that it is regrettable for all of us that they aren\u2019t looking back to the year 1931 \u2013 a tragedy, among other things \u2013 in order to draw parallels and precious lessons for today. Let\u2019s remember the bankruptcy of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/PourUnCapitalismeEntreAdultesConsentants.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13524,"url":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/michel-santi","url_meta":{"origin":20915,"position":4},"title":"About me","author":"Michel Santi","date":"April 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Michel Santi is a French-Swiss economist, financier, writer, and advisor to central banks and sovereign wealth funds. Born in Beirut to a Franco-Lebanese family, he grew up between the Middle East and Europe before beginning his financial career in 1986 at Banque Indosuez in Geneva. He later worked for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/lettre-AF.jpg?fit=842%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/lettre-AF.jpg?fit=842%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/lettre-AF.jpg?fit=842%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/lettre-AF.jpg?fit=842%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5874,"url":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/misery-and-opulence","url_meta":{"origin":20915,"position":5},"title":"Misery and opulence","author":"kerlia","date":"April 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 \u00a0 Misery and opulence A chronicle of global austerity In its current form, the European single currency is an economic schizophrenia vector machine, which creates unemployment and inequality. The Euro is decidedly no longer the symbol of European unity! Without a doubt, the Euro\u2019s founding fathers made a very\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"mis\u00e8re et opulence","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michelsanti.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/mis%C3%A8re-et-opulence-2-184x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20915"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21149,"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20915\/revisions\/21149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michelsanti.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}