Your Majesty the
Your Royal Highnesses, heads of state and government, members of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with humility and gratitude that we
stand here together to receive this award on behalf of the European Union.
Ich bin ein Europäer.
The Eurozone was built at the high point of neoliberalism and the people who built it actually believed their rhetoric.
They believed that if we had liberalised banks they would send money to where it was most needed
and they believed that if we left it to the market there would be investment and growth.
They assumed that in a globalised capitalism there would be no more crises and it's very dangerous
when elites believe their rhetoric and it's even more dangerous when they act upon those beliefs.
The European Union is a union of competence and inequality.
In this web series we go in search of the great winners and losers of the crisis in Europe.
How have we come to this? And above all, what is Europe that we really want?
This story begins when the first file of Domino fell down, when the financial bubble burst
and for that we revoked a few years ago.
A part of the people I speak to are really traumatised.
They really thought, I'm making the end of the Western society.
Hedge fund managers, traders, people see that they're going down.
No money, no automatic money.
The advance of supermarkets stops, cities still have two days to eat, mass executions take place
and then it's empty to create an order, because then you get a huge plunder.
And that's where we really came from in 2008.
We came from two fingers away from the catastrophe.
The world is two fingers away from the catastrophe.
Our banking editors at the Guardian call home, they're going to the supermarket and buy so much food.
If we want to rebuild a viable financial system, the moralisation of capitalism,
financial is a priority.
That's why it doesn't come out, because we're still in this situation.
The situation is really dramatic and dangerous today.
The banking sector is paradoxical enough, one of the big winners of the banking crisis.
Because they came out bigger than ever and they've become too big, too much.
That means they can just go on quietly, with a lot of courage to speculate.
Because they know that we're going to jump at certain moments.
Autoregulation.
To solve all the problems, it's over.
To let it go, it's over.
The very powerful market, which is always right, it's over.
Perhaps some leaders at that time realized that they had allowed too much of this risk
and that they had supported too much of the bank.
And then they said these good words, I think that one of the protagonists was Sara Cosí,
that she said at that moment that this could not continue.
It's over.
You have to pull out the lessons of the crisis, so that the crisis doesn't happen again.
But these good recommendations were forgotten soon.
Because international finances are very important.
And these financials were immediately called to the order.
WEEK LATER
In the circumstances we have now, we cannot regulate massively.
This is not possible.
only regulates if we have peace times at the finance markets that we exactly
would be on the motorway at 180 kilometers per hour from summer to winter
change that's not possible it's only then reform if we really have normal times
we don't have but who makes reforms now he says for that the Eurozone Christmas
two to the tango dancing says one who leads the other who participates the
politics also in germany and the eurozone has the finance market massively
deregulated why you wanted to have banks and insurance finance institutes
on one eye higher with the british-american institutes that is the
politics also has a damage and when the politics today says the banks are
sorry then that's not right both sides have made mistakes the banks also but
must be very clear when a banker sees that he can make rent then
can't you do it for responsible that the rent is actually doing or in my
words expressed when the door to the mill can't be surprised when the
folks come we believe that these financiers were on the ground they were
fell like that and that they had to pick up the pieces
we can come in soon just around the corner
there are immediately one who said in english do not worry about you it's us
who have broken everything but it will ask us to fix everything everyone has
laughed that day but that's what happened that's exactly what happened
if we want to know why the great reforms of the financial sector continue
without implementing we have to go to brucellas the european capital of
lobby this magnificent tree is in a very particular place just next to the
european parliament the tree was planted by the seab a lobby for lobbyists there
4500 lobbyists accredited in the parliament and they have free access here
that is to say six times more lobbyists than parliamentarians so this tree
perfectly symbolizes the privileged access of the lobbyists
businessmen to our political leaders
the european bank federation represents about 5000 banks in europe our
members are the 27 national banking associations it is not a secret that in
the parliament we propose text amendments but it's always the choice of the
member of parliament to take this text or write something else it's really up to
them we are not influencing we are informing it's a big difference we should
regulate but we should not over-regulate banks are no longer in crisis we have to
turn that page no I think we should have a pause on the regulatory side and look
forward to the future
in 2012 the international monetary fund informs that the financial sector
is still as unstable as before the crisis the lobbyists have tried their best to
stop the true reforms the political world gave them for that all the
opportunities at this point in the financial crisis a group of experts had to
advise the European Commission on the reforms to be introduced of the 42
members of that consultive group 34 came from the financial sector after
many protests the composition of those expert groups was expanded but this
example shows how far the power of the lobbyists has come the way that the
banks have been saved continuously shows that this is nothing to do with
economic theory this is about it leads looking after their own
living the bank sector overnames and that the winst and the most important of the
banks go to the society when it goes well and that the society then also
comes when it would go less well that is a quite coherent whole so the
societal of the bank sector and the supply of state guarantees even to
public banks seems to me a very essential idea
save the financial sector has cost many billions in the next episode we are going to
see who is paying that bill
