It’s like a nightmare. While everything seemed perfectly normal, suddenly everything falls apart. The veils are torn. Like a heavenly cardboard decor that would crumble to dust to leave only ruins. And debts…
This is what must have felt in recent years, many savers victims of such and such a scam. Photovoltaic. To energy renovation. To real estate in the tropics. So many lark mirrors that have become saucepans.
Many have fallen prey to outright crooks. Who surf on the sirens of the stock markets or on the spirit of the times. Who brandish dazzling new technologies and often totally bogus, to fill a hidden cash drawer in a tax haven. Sometimes, too, there are characters who are more fanciful than deliberately dishonest, but who get trapped by a system that is beyond them. And who, therefore, will drag down all those who trusted them. Obviously, the textbook case is that of Bernard Madoff, a charismatic figure in New York finance, who turned out to be the greatest trickster of the 20th century. To which category does the author of this financial crash around CN2i belong? For justice to say. He himself recognizes an astonishing lightness. And this case brings to light this dark side of the business world.
Beyond the sums lost by the victims, often the savings of a lifetime, these scandals undermine investor confidence. This will not suit business creators, true innovators, who are forced to run from bank to bank to defend their (good!) ideas. We are a country of daring engineers and inventors who, faced with reluctant bankers, need to be given a chance… and money: there are sometimes great successes at stake.
It is no coincidence that scams of all kinds multiply in times of crisis. The global epidemic has aroused various feelings: fear of the future, and at the same time, the desire to dream, to believe in something, even the fine words of an enchanter. In any case, it has lowered our natural defenses against trickery.
Are we going, in return, towards more distrust and withdrawal? With the risk, this time, of a slow collective sclerosis? Ah, how difficult it is to exercise trust!
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