The GEAB is celebrating its 10 year anniversary

Dear Subscriber,

Here we are, counting 100 editions of our bulletin and 10 years of an incredible GEAB adventure.

Let me tell you this story:

The GEAB was born in January, 2006, out of a fierce desire of independence for our think-tank, LEAP : an intellectual independence, essential to the relevance of our work on European democratization and on Europe’s global place and role, requiring financial independence. Until 2005, the traffic of our websites was telling us with what interest our work was being followed. Therefore, we decided to make this bold bet: increase the quality and quantity of our content, and, at the same time, deliver part of it upon paid subscription … in order to test its relevance each month and ensure its sustainable independence. The GEAB by LEAP[1] was born … but would the bet actually be won?

“Very well, but what was his lucky star?”[2]

Beginning with the second edition, the term “global systemic crisis” was coined, an anticipation presented under the shape of an « alert » and combined with an expression that analysts of the crisis will often use again : « the end of the world as we knew  it ».  Yet, what does luck have to do with all this? Our luck was that the “end of the world” phrase soon became viral on the internet. The notoriety of the GEAB was born… on February 15, 2006.

Yet, the real glory days were still ahead of us.

In fact, we were announcing a crisis of systemic nature and of global scale as early as the beginning of 2006, two years before the generally accepted beginning of that crisis; two years during which we didn’t withdraw, despite the attacks and offensive messages we were receiving, but fortunately offset by even more numerous messages congratulating our work.

Forward-looking and constant as we were, amid the general blindness concerning the miracle of financial algorithms, supposedly benefiting from all situations, we maintained the course of an anticipation relentlessly finding evidence of the up-coming crisis. Then, the Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in the explosion of the subprime crisis, which we had anticipated in detail.

Then the whole world started talking about the GEAB…

And when I say “the whole world”, it really means the entire world. Our public announcements were being translated into dozens of languages, reproduced on hundreds of websites, and the GEAB was sold on the sly on pirate websites. Some websites were even translating the whole of GEAB into their language, trying to sell it themselves; aggressive or praise emails were falling down like rain showers, subscriptions were accumulating, and the political anticipation method, which had been used to produce this work, became more and more attractive[3]…

Moreover, there were those touching moments, when members or relatives of our team, while traveling in Turkey, or ending up on some professional missions in cocoa plantations in Brazil, or in diving classes in Thailand, got connected to people of all nationalities and of unexpected profiles … who knew the GEAB readers and loved to talk about it.

The big challenge: the sustainability of this success.

“Our” crisis became “the” crisis. Everyone appropriated this term, dissecting it, describing it, suggesting all kinds of interpretations for it… while the crisis itself continued on its path, transforming and spreading impacting new sectors, disappearing here, reappearing there… Our perseverance to recognize in the crisis the effects of a major transition from a Western-centric world to a multi-polar world, found in all these evolutions an efficient explanatory thread. Of course, our anticipations haven’t all become materialized, but they all helped in one way or another with the general understanding of the ins and outs of the crisis. In confirmation of this assertion, business leaders tell us how much our analyzes help them improve their decisions, in the general instability and the lack of visibility so much characterizing their professional environment at that time.

In 2012 we lost our Director of Studies.

At the end of 2012, after four years of illness, our Director of Studies, Franck Biancheri, passed away. The team that surrounded him in the drafting of the GEAB bulletin, after thousands of hours talking with him on those topics, integrating his vision, his way of thinking, and, more specifically, his method, the political anticipation method, took up, furthering his demand, the gamble of continuing without him. This change, combined with the fact that the crisis moved toward political and geopolitical dimensions, resulted in a slightly different GEAB, more geopolitical-political, less focused on the collapse of the “world before”,  more oriented toward the emergence of the “world after”…

Being one step ahead must remain our priority.

The GEAB of 2006 was announcing major changes to a system that considered itself immutable; the post-2012 GEAB shows the future perspectives to a world on the brink of the Apocalypse. Yet, the West is not the world, and even the worst wars come to an end one day. So, providing a vision of the possible tracks for the reconstruction of the world, while continuing to show the destructive trends at work, became our two-fold mission.

New successful anticipations confirms the new format

Oil crisis? Seen! Car crisis? Seen! European airlines crisis? Seen! Maintaining of the euro? Seen … against all odds. In three years, our team has demonstrated to its readers, and comforted itself, that LEAP’s political anticipation method was a transmissible intellectual tool. You are there to prove it, as well as the tens of thousands of readers of our public announcements. At the end of 2013, LEAP concluded that the test period had been convincing enough and decided to modernize the bulletin: a new administrative team led by Geta Grama-Moldovan, whom I no longer need to introduce, new languages, a new website, a new template, a new format (Epub), and today, new press reviews …

The GEAB is definitely there, provoking respect as well as critics as always… as well as lust for it and counterfeiting attempts, the best evidence of its intrinsic value!

Yes, the GEAB is unique!

Rooted in European history and networks, based on an original political anticipation method, driven by LEAP’s desire for independence and relevance, brave and free, the GEAB has offered, for 10 years, the interpretation of the crisis which, amid the totally chaotic interpretation of the media as well as political response, has remained rational, original, consistent and regularly validated.

Whether you have followed us for 10 years or for 1 month, without you, the GEAB would not exist.

For 10 years now, it is your subscriptions, these confidence votes that you send us every month, which encourage us to continue our analysis and anticipation work. Thanks to you, LEAP is probably the only think-tank in the world connected to the general public, “elected” by the general public … instead of being financed by public authorities or private interests, like the others on the market.

It is this “democratic” anchoring and this public approval which allow us to engage ourselves in action with more than innovative projects, such as the Euro-BRICS Young Leaders Summit[4], the Agora of the Euroland Citizens[5]  or our project of democratization of the future, the Open School of Political Anticipation[6], which should soon be launched.

Therefore, it is with pride, but above all with very much gratitude to you that we are signing, today, the 100th GEAB issue … and we already give you an appointment for number 101, in line with the 100^th… simply that.

The GEAB by LEAP is here … and you too by our sides, at least we truly hope so …

Yours faithfully,

Marie-Hélène Caillol

President of LEAP and Director of Publication of GEAB

Author of the ”Manual of Political Anticipation” (Anticipolis, 2009)

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[1]  Laboratoire Européen d’Anticipation Politique, created in 2005 by Franck Biancheri and myself (further on to Europe2020, ancestor of LEAP, created in 1999 by the same two persons), is an independent European think-tank which dedicated its anticipation work mostly to two topics: the European governance (Euroland Gouvernance 2020 Project) and Europe’s connections with the rest of the world (Euro-BRICS Project). As part of its work, LEAP organized many seminars and meetings with political leaders, official representatives, economists, financial clerks, members of civil society, published reports and analyses, as well as the monthly bulletin on the «global systemic crisis», the GEAB.

[2]  When an officer’s values were presented to him, Napoleon liked to inquire about the lucky star that person had. Source: Le Figaro, 03/12/2015.

[3]  As part of a partnership LEAP – La Sorbonne, the first training sessions to the political anticipation were conceived, soon followed by the book: Manuel d’Anticipation Politique, edited by myself, based on those training sessions, a book published by Anticipolis Editions in 2009.

[4]  Source : LEAP/EuroBRICS , 26/06/2015

[5]  Source : LEAP/EUROLAND

[6]  According to: IRPA, 10/11/2015