Aside from the phenomenal success of the vaccination campaign in the United States, I myself was vaccinated last March long before my age group was called and just over two days after I was put on the lists.
The United States government has achieved another tour de force because its citizens are emerging from the Covid crisis – financially – in a better position than before the outbreak of the pandemic. So sensitive to social protection, Europe seems to have lost a little of its soul in favor of this crisis for having been overtaken by a nation traditionally lacking this fiber.
In the end, it comes out of it discredited – this Europe – and all the more so since it cannot fully attribute this vertiginous American impetus to the only Democrat Biden (and to his Pharaonic rescue plan of 1.900 billion dollars), because even Trump hated him was not left out with his two plans adopted towards the end of his term.
A review of the runoff myth
Brookings studies have shown that the country’s economy could not have recovered before the end of 2023 in the absence of this succession of stimuli, when economic statistics indicate that the fundamentals returned in May 2021 to their starting levels. 2020. So Americans have learned from the mistakes of the past. From this close past, since everyone remembers the timid Obama stimulus plans in 2008 entirely responsible for a recovery that was timid and uneven.
In fact, the American authorities have gone even further in the context of the Covid crisis, because, while they have of course spent a lot more, they have also spent a lot better. The emphasis has indeed been particularly placed (until then under Biden and at the end of the Trump mandate) on substantial aid for families, while almost all previous aid was in favor of companies and taxpayers. the most fortunate. It is therefore a drastic revision of doctrine that was undertaken on the occasion of the health crisis, because – in fact – the United States of America has now officially renounced the policy of supply while throwing to oblivion the runoff myth.
A typical family will thus have received three checks: 1,200 dollars per adult in spring 2020, 600 in December of the same year and 1,400 in March 2021! The impact on consumption, on household morale, but also indirectly on business investment, is massive, because the addition of these sums given unconditionally to American citizens was the equivalent of nearly $ 11,000 for a family of four in the space of a year. Such direct support to citizens through the transmission belt for sending checks is a game-changer. It is unprecedented in world history, because it openly favors individuals and allows them to compensate for the loss of income due to the health crisis, without frills, without any administrative hassle. “Populist”, would accuse certain sorrowful – or rather jealous – minds stigmatizing the passage beyond the intermediary bodies which would only have slowed down the process, even reduced the amounts granted.
Europe lagging behind
It is a Copernican revolution initiated in the United States which is nevertheless unfolding before our eyes. It commands all the more admiration since it is above all Europe – whose average GDP will have contracted by 6.7% in 2020 – which needed such energetic measures, in any case much more than the States – United which will have lost only 3.5 points of GDP over the same period. European reluctance and bureaucracy have therefore produced nothing conclusive, while the economy they control has shrunk twice as much as that of the United States. American generosity, for its part, will have enabled its citizens – including and especially the less well off – to go through this crisis with peace of mind, which was therefore a real revealing of the shortcomings of our still and still hesitant continent.
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Michel Santi is a macro-economist, specializing in financial markets and central banks. He is founder and managing director of Art Trading & Finance.
He has just published “Fauteuil 37” prefaced by Edgar Morin. He is also the author of a new book: “The testament of a disillusioned economist”. His Facebook page and his feedTwitter
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