E2020 -Crisis is now!

Seven concrete consequences for economic and political players and decision-makers
Last February, LEAP/E2020 anticipated that a global systemic crisis was to be triggered at the end of March. Today, three months later, LEAP/E2020 can anticipate that the initial phase of this crisis is about to be finished and that, as soon as the beginning of June 2006, the crisis will enter a phase of acceleration. Before detailing the main features of this new phase (described in GEAB Nr5), LEAP/E2020 would like to clarify the 4 different phases of a global systemic crisis.

A global systemic crisis develops following a complex process where 4 phases can be distinguished, overlapping one another:
• in the first so-called “trigger” phase, a variety of until then un-related factors, start converging and interacting in a way that is perceptible mostly by careful observers and central players
• in the second “acceleration” phase, a large majority of players and observers suddenly become aware that a crisis is there and that it has already begun to affect a growing amount of the system’s components
• in the third so-called “impact” phase, the system starts to transform radically (implosion and/or explosion) under the strain of cumulated factors, simultaneously affecting the whole system
• in the fourth and last “decanting” phase, the features of the new system born from the crisis begin to appear.


In the present situation, LEAP/E2020 estimates that the initial trigger-phase is about to finish and that, during June 2006, the world will enter a phase of acceleration of the crisis.
Indeed, in less than three months, many certainties as to the future were turned upside down (« inescapable » dollar-denomination, « return » to cheap oil, « peaceful » solution to the Iran/USA conflict, « sustainability » of the US real-estate bubble, US « domination » over two other key global players – China and Russia,…) and a great number of indicators now point at converging directions, all of them sources of unbalance for the current system (vertiginous rise in gold and precious metals prices, escalation of inflationary pressures, increase of the interest rates, EURUSD approaching 1.30, large amounts of central banks’ reserves being switched to Euros, rise of Asian currencies, stock market and currency crises developing in various areas in the world, growing amounts of articles published in the international and national press using words such as « krach, crisis, collapse, risk, conflict, … » ).