While the stock market is in complete remission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has composed a paper likely to freeze much ardor. In fact, contrary to what had been forecast at the beginning of the year, the economic contraction is proving deeper, the recession, longer. In short, the worst is not behind us.

    Exactly a year ago, the IMF calculated that the after effects of the banks' binging would come to about a trillion dollars. Today, the inventory of losses having become clearer, that institution estimates the painful - to say the least - bill will exceed 4 trillion. This gap, this enormous imbalance, can, most notably, be put down to the fact that packs of insurance companies, pension funds, and others have joined the contingents of the lamed, the battalion of those addicted to subprimes and financial vehicles confected to lure the credulous, who confused financial engineering with a La Fontaine fable. Obviously, I'm thinking of Perrette, "The Milkmaid and her Milk Pot."

    Quite logically, this crisis attributable to banks and to accountants has transplanted itself onto the so-called real economy, the engineers' economy. And it's done so with such violence and speed that an impressive list of nations have begged for loans over the course of recent days. Just last week, Colombia, Mexico and Poland obtained lines of credit from the IMF totaling tens of billions. Before that, all the countries of Eastern Europe had contracted loans from the same institution. Soon ...

    Soon, it's likely that the United Kingdom, the very same that succeeded in the feat of giving birth to the invisible hand moved by the ghosts of Scottish castles, the very one where the profession of insurer was invented, will turn up at the Funds' counter. Curious country, England: Rather than listening to the counsels of prudence and balance developed by one of its own citizens, John Maynard Keynes, it's stuffed itself with the theories of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, the champions of "creative destruction."

    Nonetheless, as far as destruction goes, our British friends don't do it retail. As proof, the budget submitted the day after the IMF report. So, then? The forecast deficit will reach 12.5 percent of GDP. To really assess the importance of that figure, to really understand its possible consequences, I insist on reminding, underlining and hammering home the fact that this budget, this 12.5 percent deficit, is the quasi-twin of the one developed in ... 1945! Goodness gracious! In other words, it's the copy of a budget developed to REBUILD Keynes's country.

    Things are happening in the United Kingdom, as in Germany and France, where the contraction of GDP will also be more marked than had been desired, because, among other factors, of a certain laziness on the housekeeping front. Here's what I mean. Unlike the United States, the banks in the three heavyweights of the European economy are far from having affected the asset write-downs they will inevitably have to effect. It is estimated that American establishments will have to write off 550 billion dollars spread out over the next two years. Europe? 750 billion in 2009 alone.

    With this battery of figures communicated, everyone can well imagine that the politicians are confronted with a hell of a challenge. If they want to avoid systemic risk, elected officials have no other solution, the IMF assures us, than to design other rescue plans for banks and others. The challenge? In Germany, France,?the United Kingdom, as well, moreover, as in the United States, public opinion is opposed. Put off by the millions and millions of bonuses showered on the personnel of companies rescued thanks to the government's - therefore the taxpayers' - billions, public opinion in these countries is no longer even hiding its anger. The people are expressing it.

    Just about everywhere in Europe, a wind of revolt is presently blowing, more particularly in France, where, over the last two months, company head sequestrations have been observed, not to mention the recent sacking of a prefecture. When one dwells on the remarks formulated by the people, one is compelled to acknowledge that these bonus stories, this negation of the most elementary ethics, have been the main engine for their acts.

    In 1945, it was calculated that the costs associated to the Second World War had reached about a trillion dollars, or 12 trillion of today's dollars. There's an enormous difference between 1945 and today: no destroyed cities or bridges, above all no millions of poor disemboweled wretches on the roads. So, then? Up until now, this crisis has cost a third of what that war cost and it's still not a thing of the past.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.