Everyone knows, everyone says that France must reduce its public debt. Everyone knows, everyone says that the campaign is not on that subject. Everyone knows, everyone says that no serious saving proposal is made by any candidate. Everyone knows, everyone says that the objectives agreed by both Left and Right are completely out of reach, because nobody knows how to make the necessary budget surplus for at least 10 years, starting from 2017 at best.
And yet, nothing changes. The campaign stretches, like yawning. one gets bored there, both left and right only talk about tiny details, new uncosted spendings or symbolic taxes, but where there is no payoff.
If things continue as they are until May 6, this is what awaits us.
On May 7, if Francois Holland is elected, the right will enter into a serious crisis and explode, to the delight of the National Front. The new President will announce that the financial situation is terrible, worse than announced by earlier teams, and that he must take a closer look at reality before taking action. Financial markets, on which depend three quarters of the financing of our public debt, will be concerned and will make loans needed in May by the State to pay the salaries of its civil servants more expensive. The lenders will immediately require from the President, and his first government some very brutal reforms and cuts, even before the legislative elections in June. In order not to lose, the leaders will dither and will announce nothing at all serious. After the legislative elections, the Left, that will win, will denounce the disguised accounts by the Right, and will blame them for the necessary responsibility of savings and tax increases. They will announce that at least 20 billion will have to be found in 2012 and, if growth has not materialised, which is likely, the double in 2013 and the double again in 2014. And even more in the next 3 years. This will no longer be a question of hand-outs of any kind. Throughout the five-year period.
On May 7, if Nicolas Sarkozy is elected, the Left will fall into a serious crisis, the socialist party will explode; some of its members will join Jean-Luc Melenchon, who will become the leader of the opposition; the Right will be able to face more easily the borrowing maturities in June; they will win the legislative elections, under the cautious applause of markets. But they too will have to reveal, as early as July, that the budget deficit for 2012 will be finally higher than the one announced today in the financial statements, because of errors that were impossible to predict the Right will say. To hold the forecasts of reduction of the public debt, that will be required by lenders, the Right will decide brutal cuts in social budgets, without increasing the taxes of the richest. This will mean a drop in growth and tax revenues. The new Left will throw millions of people into the street; strikes will increase. Markets will begin to worry. Interest rates will rise massively. The crisis will be there. Throughout the five-year period.
In both cases, the country will pay the price of a totally failed election campaign. Not because of the fault of the candidates. And not because of the journalists. But because of the French elites, who have not been able to get out in time of the gentle pleasures of life, of the weird war, of the misleading exhilaration.