CNN television reported the other night a significant incident last week

To understand America in 2009, the reading of "The former regime and the revolution", de Tocqueville, would it at least as useful as its inevitable "democracy in America"

Of course, today America's is not in 1788, and the "revolution" with a large R is not on the corner of the street. The collapse of Lehman Brothers has nothing to do with that of the Bastille. It would take much imagination to compare Barack Obama with Louis XVI and Michelle Obama with Marie-Antoinette... There is not in the American political tradition of use of collective and uncontrolled violence. And yet, the French that I am, living in America for more than two months, looking nightly news Americans and daily moves in an American company in crisis, can that collect this mixture of fear and anger, accompanied by a strong sense of injustice, which was one of the characteristics of the climate of the France on the eve of the revolution.

It is sufficient to substitute for the lack of bread the loss of habitat, to replace the aristocrats by bankers and financiers, and tax privileges by the stockoptions, and the comparison seems a little less artificial.

The explosion of rage and populism that accompanied the scandal of AIG (this insurance giant saved from bankruptcy by the State and distributed bonuses to its executives to not lose) is indicative of a deep malaise. "Main street america" Middle America as opposed to the elites, is animated by a profound sense of fear and injustice: "How will I live under what roof and who will pay for my medical expenses." For those millions of Americans to the uncertain future, the elite of the World Bank and the finance living on another planet. And their "privileges", such as those of the nobility in France yesterday, appear more justified by the services that they make to society and become all simply "intolerable."

In the eyes of much of the opinion American public, the Barack Obama economic team, Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers, the head of the economic advisers of the President, as the entourage of the King at the end of the Ancien Régime, inherited all the bad reflexes of the "Court", combining an understanding excessive for the old logic of the world of finance and one even ignorance and misunderstanding for the emotions and the popular suffering.

The World Bank and the finance must not only reinvent its business and lifestyle, but also its system of values. What is so shocking in the "Madoff case" it is not only the crimes of a man, it is also the behavior of many of his wealthy clients who, by greed and to become even more rich that they were, have lost all common sense financial.

CNN television reported the other night a significant incident last week. In the State of Connecticut, a group of demonstrators has rented a bus that stopped before the luxurious properties of some executives of AIG to congratulate those who had made their bonus and protest against those who had kept. In the late 18th century in France, it burned the castles; It is not there, thank God. But some privileges are more accepted or acceptable when the sense of a progress for all is replaced by the reality of a crisis confronting multitudes with the violence of a tsunami.

What are the negative lessons that President Barack Obama, the "jurist", could retain the experience of the end of the reign of Louis XVI The first is that he must not cut suffering of his people; the only verb is no longer enough. Do not fall into populism irresponsible, as can an important part of the Congress or the media, is one thing. Give the feeling of too many "understand" the world of finance and its excesses is another. Otherwise, the 'corporate laws' of today are likely to come to the same end as the rights of the former regime yesterday.