The priority for next year will be for our society to escape the patterns of the previous electoral years, with promises more or less out of touch with reality, Mugur Isărescu, the governor of the NBR said yesterday.

He also warned that the experience of the previous crises has shown that society forgets quickly.

The NBR governor said: "We are ahead of an electoral year, and all of us, not just specialists in economics and finance, are becoming increasingly aware, that we have major budget issues. There is constant talk about finding solutions. Sometimes, the solutions proposed for us are ridiculous, but they are discussed nevertheless. These debates, which are heavily publicized, can"t be overlooked. Will society and the politicians escape the pattern of the previous electoral cycles, when more or less realistic promises were made?"

He added that "the extent to which the economies of the world were affected by the global crisis, depended on the vulnerabilities of each of them, but there are always some unfair occurrences, and some countries are falling". Mugur Isărescu added that the vulnerabilities created during the good times will decide which countries will make it out of the crisis weaker and which ones will make it out stronger: "Regardless of how many lessons we have learned and we are going to learn, the experience of the previous crises shows that the social memory is a short-term one. I am not referring here to a memory of a few generations, but rather to something which is extremely frequent".

According to the governor of the NBR, the current crisis brings old disagreements to the forefront: "I"ve heard the same tune with various tones and you know how it goes: it"s the tone that matters. The speeches oscillate between two extremes, < laissez-faire > and interventionism. (...)The NBR, as an institution, was viewed both as a hero an