Fim de festa

Esta era nasceu de guerras e revoluções. A próxima, não sabemos.

Uma reflexão simultaneamente melancólica e realista de Bill Gross, um dos grandes gestores financeiros americanos dos últimos quarenta anos, sobre uma era que está a chegar ao fim.

Envelhecimento demográfico, elevados níveis de endividamento/PIB, e destruição tecnológica de emprego, são uma combinação letal. Todos morremos, como morrem todas as eras de crescimento assentes em 'revoluções de preços' (inflação). Esta, que vem de 1887 (Fischer, D. H.), chegou ao fim. Segue-se uma nova era de deflação, regressão demográfica (Portugal poderá chegar a 2050 com menos 750 a 800 mil residentes que hoje), elevados níveis de desemprego estrutural, envelhecimento da população (a sustentabilidade do estado social tenderá a degradar-se), quebra dos rendimentos do trabalho e do capital, instabilidade social, política e diplomática recorrente, e finalmente, adaptação.

Possivelmente assistiremos a um novo renascimento cultural, por mais paradoxal que este vaticínio pareça. Será, com certeza, noutro paradigma energético, noutro paradigma de consumo, e noutro paradigma de felicidade.

A Sense of an Ending
By Bill Gross
Janus Capital / Investment Outlook, May 4, 2015

Having turned the corner on my 70th year, like prize winning author Julian Barnes, I have a sense of an ending. Death frightens me and causes what Barnes calls great unrest, but for me it is not death but the dying that does so. After all, we each fade into unconsciousness every night, do we not? Where was “I” between 9 and 5 last night? Nowhere that I can remember, with the exception of my infrequent dreams. Where was “I” for the 13 billion years following the Big Bang? I can’t remember, but assume it will be the same after I depart – going back to where I came from, unknown, unremembered, and unconscious after billions of future eons. I’ll miss though, not knowing what becomes of “you” and humanity’s torturous path – how it will all turn out in the end. I’ll miss that sense of an ending, but it seems more of an uneasiness, not a great unrest. What I fear most is the dying – the “Tuesdays with Morrie” that for Morrie became unbearable each and every day in our modern world of medicine and extended living; the suffering that accompanied him and will accompany most of us along that downward sloping glide path filled with cancer, stroke, and associated surgeries which make life less bearable than it was a day, a month, a decade before.

Turning 70 is something that all of us should hope to do but fear at the same time. At 70, parents have died long ago, but now siblings, best friends, even contemporary celebrities and sports heroes pass away, serving as a reminder that any day you could be next. A 70-year-old reads the obituaries with a self-awareness as opposed to an item of interest. Some point out that this heightened intensity should make the moment all the more precious and therein lies the challenge: make it so; make it precious; savor what you have done – family, career, giving back – the “accumulation” that Julian Barnes speaks to. Nevertheless, the “responsibility” for a life’s work grows heavier as we age and the “unrest” less restful by the year. All too soon for each of us, there will be “great unrest” and a journey’s ending from which we came and to where we are going.

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