Jacques Attali

Jacques Attali  link [https://www.amazon.com/Jacques-Attali/e/B001JOX8FK linkedin=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquesattali Amazon] Facebook IMDB Keywiki Littlesis Twitter Website Wikiquote (Academic, Author, Editor, Deep politician,Banker)
Born	1 November 1943 Algiers, French Algeria
Nationality	French
Ethnicity	Jewish
Alma mater	Lycée Janson-de-Sailly,École Polytechnique, École des Mines, Sciences Po, École nationale d'administration, Paris Dauphine University
Parents	Simon Attali
Siblings	Bernard Attali
Interests	Transhumanism, Euthanasia
French deep politician and academic. "The real bourgeoisie running the world is about 1,000 people. They are running capitalism." Attended the 1975 Bilderberg, Le siecle

Jacques Attali is a French deep politician, economic and social theorist, futurist writer, political adviser and senior civil servant. He was counselor and gray eminence to President François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1991, where he advised "economic rigour and replaced the French economic model with neoliberalism, and was the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1991-1993. He attended the 1975 Bilderberg. He has been using the Covid-19-crisis for vocally pushing a total digital remake of the French and world economy, and a vaccine for everyone in the world. {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Jacques Attali |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Jacques Attali|+sep=, |Has text=“A major pandemic would raise awareness of the need for altruism, at least self-interested. History teaches us that humanity only evolves significantly when it is truly afraid: then it first sets up defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes futile (distraction); sometimes effective (therapeutic, if necessary setting aside all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis has passed, it transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and to include them in a democratic health policy.

The beginning of the pandemic could trigger one of these structuring fears.”

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“A major pandemic would raise awareness of the need for altruism, at least self-interested. History teaches us that humanity only evolves significantly when it is truly afraid: then it first sets up defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes futile (distraction); sometimes effective (therapeutic, if necessary setting aside all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis has passed, it transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and to include them in a democratic health policy. The beginning of the pandemic could trigger one of these structuring fears.”
Jacques Attali (3 May 2009) 

Prophecies come true

Politically, albeit formally a socialist, he has championed neoliberalism. Since his earliest books, Attali foresaw signals of the future, albeit weak at the time, that later came true. To which degree Attali, as a guru for the establishment, helped make these prophecies true, is hard to measure.

In La parole et l'outil (1976), he announced and described the shift from an energy-based society to an information-based society. In Bruits, in 1977, he announced what would later be the internet, YouTube, and the importance of musical practice; in La nouvelle économie française, in 1978, he discussed the coming emergence of the personal computer, hyper-surveillance and self-surveillance. In Les trois mondes, in 1980, he announced the shift of the centre of power around the Pacific. In L'ordre Cannibale, in 1980, he announced the advent of a prosthetic society, now known as transhumanism. In Histoires du temps, he announced the rapid pace of history and the growing immediacy of relationships. In Amours, he announced the emergence of poly-romantic relationships. In Au propre et au figuré, he announced the break-up of property and its use, and subsequently he invented the concept of the "nomadic object." In Lignes d'horizons, in 1990, he predicted the relative decline of US power. In Brève histoire de l'avenir, he announced a corporate power grab by health data and insurance companies. In L'homme nomade, he described the great movement of populations whose sedentary life was only a temporary stage.

Early Life

Jacques Attali was born on 1 November 1943 in Algiers (French Algeria), with his twin brother Bernard Attali, in a Jewish family. In 1956, two years after the beginning of the Algerian independence war (1954–1962), his father decided to move to Paris with his family. Jacques and Bernard studied at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, in the posh 16^th arrondissement, where they met Jean-Louis Bianco and Laurent Fabius. In 1966, Jacques graduated from the École polytechnique (first of the class of 1963). He also graduated from the École des mines, Sciences Po and the École nationale d'administration (third of the class of 1970).

In 1968, while doing an internship at the prefecture of a French department (Nièvre), he met for the second time with François Mitterrand, then President of the department, whom he had met for the first time three years before.

In 1972, Jacques Attali received a Ph.D. in economics from University Paris Dauphine, for a thesis written under the supervision of Alain Cotta. Michel Serres was among the jury of his Ph.D.

In 1970, when he was 27, he became a member of the Council of State. In 1972, aged 29, he published his first two books on political economy.

Attali taught economics from 1968 to 1985 at the Paris Dauphine University, at the École polytechnique and at the École des Ponts et chaussées.

In his laboratory in Dauphine, the IRIS, he gathered several young researchers Yves Stourdzé (who ran the European research program EUREKA co-founded by Jacques Attali), Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, and Érik Orsenna, but also leading figures in various fields (including journalism, mathematics, show business, financial analysis).

Political Career

Jacques Attali's close collaboration with François Mitterrand started in December 1973. His directed his political campaign for the presidential elections in 1974. He then became his main chief of staff in the opposition. In 1981, François Mitterrand, after he was elected President, named Attali as his special adviser. From this moment on, Jacques Attali wrote notes every evening for the attention of the French President, which dealt with economics, culture, politics, or the last book he read. He also attended all the Cabinet meetings, the Defense Council, and all bilateral meetings between President François Mitterrand and foreign heads of States and governments. The President also entrusted him with the role of "sherpa" (personal representative of a head of State) for the European and G7 summits. A CIA document from 1984 detailed that: "one constant at the Elysee is the strong influence of Jaques Attali who remains personally very close to the president".

Attali then enlarged his circle of acquaintances to Raymond Barre, Jacques Delors, Philippe Séguin, Jean-Luc Lagardère, Antoine Riboud, Michel Serres and Coluche. He advised the President to get Jean-Louis Bianco, Alain Boublil and several young, promising graduates from the École nationale d’administration (like François Hollande and Ségolène Royal) to join his team.

In August 1989, Jacques Attali gave up politics and left the Elysée Palace. He founded the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in London, and became its first president. He resigned from the EBRD's top post in 1993 amid charges of lavish spending and mismanagement.

After 2000

File:Avignon-attali-macron.jpg

A 2022 Avignon street art fresco represented Jacques Attali as a puppeteer, manipulating a puppet which has the features of Emmanuel Macron. The fresco was painted over after pressure from Jewish associations, as being an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory"

]] In 2008 and 2010, he was asked by then President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair a bipartisan commission aiming at proposing reforms to "foster French economic growth", in reality to introduce more neoliberalism. The commission was composed of 42 members, freely appointed by Attali, and the ideas were adopted by Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of Economy, for his "Macron Law".

Other Activities

In 1980 he founded Action Contre la Faim., together with Bernard-Henri Lévy and other intellectuals.

In 1994, Jacques Attali founded Attali & Associates (A&A), an international advisory firm which specializes in strategy consulting, corporate finance and venture capital.

In 1998, he founded Positive Planet, a microfinance organisation. In 2001, French police raided Attali's home, focusing on a payment of 1.5m francs ($213,000) payment from businessman Pierre Falcone to a consulting company belonging to Attali, in connection with an arms deal with Angola. Attali claimed the money was part of a microfinance deal.

In 2012, Attali became a member of the supervisory board of Kepler Capital Markets, a Swiss broker based in Geneva.

He also presides over the supervisory board of Slate.fr.

He has published over 75 books, translated into over 30 languages.

Opinions

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“The real bourgeoisie running the world is about 1,000 people. They are running capitalism." He reconsiders: "Well, one might say it's 10,000, but no more than that. In a world population of 6.5 billion, that is not very many people.”
Jacques Attali (2006) 

2009 Major Pandemic Prediction

In 2009 he made a suggestion that the then current pandemic could be used to establish wider control over the human population, including unified global taxation and a global police force.

Attali wrote in the letter to L'Express:

A major pandemic would raise awareness of the need for altruism, at least self-interested.

History teaches us that humanity only evolves significantly when it is truly afraid: then it first sets up defense mechanisms; sometimes intolerable (scapegoats and totalitarianisms); sometimes futile (distraction); sometimes effective (therapeutic, if necessary setting aside all previous moral principles). Then, once the crisis has passed, it transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom and to include them in a democratic health policy.

The beginning of the pandemic could trigger one of these structuring fears.

If it is not more serious than the two previous fears of the last fifteen years linked to the risk of a pandemic (the mad cow crisis in Great Britain and that of avian flu in China), it will first have significant economic consequences (drop in air transport activity, drop in tourism and the price of oil); it will cost about $ 2 million per infected person and will lower the stock markets by about 15%; its impact will be very brief (during the avian flu episode, the Chinese growth rate declined only during the second quarter of 2003, only to explode higher in the third); it will also have consequences in terms of organization (still in 2003, very rigorous police measures were taken throughout Asia; the World Health Organization has set up warning procedures on a planetary scale ; and some countries, in particular France and Japan, have built up considerable reserves of drugs and masks).

If the epidemic is a little more serious, which is possible, since it is transmissible by humans, it will have truly planetary consequences: economic (models suggest that this could lead to a loss of 3 trillion dollars , i.e. a 5% drop in global GDP) and political (because of the risk of contagion, the countries of the North will have an interest in ensuring that those in the South are not sick, and they will have to ensure that the poorest have access to to drugs now stored for the richest only); a major pandemic will then raise, better than any humanitarian or ecological discourse, the awareness of the need for altruism, at least self-interested.

And, even if, as we can obviously hope, this crisis is not very serious, we must not forget, as for the economic crisis, to learn the lessons, so that before the next - inevitable - prevention and control mechanisms are put in place, as well as logistical processes for the equitable distribution of drugs and vaccines. For that, we will have to put in place a global police force, global storage and therefore global taxation. It will then, much faster than economic reason alone would have allowed, to lay the foundations for a real world government. In fact, it was through the hospital that the establishment of a real state began in France in the seventeenth century.

In the meantime, we could at least hope for the implementation of a real European policy on the subject. But here again, like on so many other subjects, Brussels is silent.

L’Avenir De La Vie (“The Future of Life”)

There is a picture/text shared on social media, which purports to be an excerpt from his answers in the book L’Avenir De La Vie (“The Future of Life”, 1981, published only in French). Some of it is vaguely correctly translated, but most is not. What he says is:

"as soon as we exceed 60/65 years, man lives longer than he produces and he costs society a lot"

"Indeed, from the point of view of society, it is much better that the human machine stops abruptly than that it deteriorates progressively."

"Hence I believe that in the very logic of industrial society, the objective will no longer be to lengthen life expectancy, but to ensure that within a given life span, man lives as well as possible but in such a way that health expenses will be as low as possible in terms of costs for the community."

"Euthanasia will be one of the essential instruments of our future societies in any case. In a socialist logic, to begin with, the problem is as follows: socialist logic is freedom and fundamental freedom is suicide; consequently, the right to direct or indirect suicide is an absolute value in this type of society. In a capitalist society, killing machines, devices that will allow the elimination of life when it is too unbearable or economically too costly, will see the light of day and will be common practice. So I believe that euthanasia, whether it is a value of freedom or a commodity, will be one of the rules of the future society."

References