In his latest book Édouard Tétreau announces an imminent new global crisis. The extreme financialization and digitising of modern societies and economies will soon culminate in this “major incident”. But, unlike 2008, this time we will have no ammunition with which to tackle it. In order to survive and prosper again, we will have to invent a different socio-economical model. A model diametrically different to the survival-of-the-fittest law that currently prevails in our increasingly dehumanised societies and economies, crushing anyone who can’t keep up with the digital revolution; and marginalising any nations and individuals deemed insufficiently “competitive”. In this 21st century economy with its exacerbated winner-takes-all ethos, what’s left for the so-called losers? The leftovers; in other words, nothing. Tough luck for the weak.
On the basis of a memo written for the Vatican in late 2014 and in anticipation of Pope Francis’s historic US tour (from New York to Washington DC) in September 2015, Édouard Tétreau takes inspiration from the new Pope’s radicalism and from fundamental texts on social doctrine from Christianity and other major religions, as he suggests credible alternatives to the dehumanisation of our economies. Tétreau’s book is more than vitriol against 21st century capitalism: it is an antidote to the algorithms, the enhanced über-menschen and the über-capitalists who want to impose their laws on us; it is hope for a fresh start; for a new humanism.
A columnist for LesÉchos and Le Figaro, Édouard Tétreau is a corporate CEO and consultant. He anticipated the internet crash of 2000 and the fall of Jean-Marie Messier’s Vivendi Universal (Analyste au cœur de la folie financière, 2005). He had front row seats for the collapse of the American economy with the sub-prime catastrophe (20 000 milliards de dollars, Grasset, 2010), and is also the author of Quand le dollar nous tue (Grasset, 2011.) Beyond the Wall of Money is his fourth book.
Une parole peut abattre un mur. Jean-Paul II le savait, lui qui contribua à faire tomber le mur de Berlin, et sombrer le communisme. Le pape François, révolutionnaire à sa manière, et bien décidé à se mêler des affaires du monde, fera-t-il tomber le mur de l’argent ? N’a-t-il pas exhorté à ce qu’on sauve les « exclus » de l’économie, considérés aujourd’hui comme « des déchets, des restes » ? Alors, paroles pieuses, et sans effets ? Édouard Tétreau est un expert financier, mais aussi un homme de conviction et de foi. Dans ce livre iconoclaste et généreux, des coulisses du Vatican aux lobbies de Washington, l’auteur démontre avec sa virtuosité coutumière que l’économie mondiale est dominée par deux forces inhumaines et sans frontières : la finance et les nouvelles technologies. Un Veau d’or à deux têtes qu’il nous faudrait abattre, ou soumettre. Au-delà des idéologies, au-delà du mur de l’argent, au-delà de la prochaine crise financière mondiale, remettre l’homme au centre.