Finance and economic sovereignty

If globalised finance has revealed its limits, with, among others, the extraterritorial component of the USA, it is also clear that relative financial independence also depends on economic power. The return of the strategic state is urgent but can only be conceived at the European level. Sovereignty in finance is protean: it concerns the Euro as an international currency, the capacity to finance by the financial markets (with stock exchanges that have hardly financed Western economies with their own funds for the last twenty years) and by the banks (whose improved solvency and resilience is the result of progress in terms of regulation). It also concerns payment systems and market infrastructures, in particular clearing houses, which are critical institutions in terms of financial stability. Finally, it concerns the capacity to mobilise savings both to finance public and private debt and to finance the massive investments needed to cope with industrial and technological change. The appetite of investors for ESG criteria, which is certainly commendable, nevertheless poses a problem in defining “sustainability”; for example, financing arms may not be ethical, but unilateral disarmament is certainly not sustainable. Only states, or the European Union, have the capacity to mutualise and/or assume the risks of financing innovation and structural change. Is it not time to recognise the questionable marginal usefulness of certain financial innovations and to genuinely correct the failings of the financial markets in order to finally improve the allocation of resources?