The economic situation of France is now clear: the country is on the very edge of a recession which will reduce tax revenues, and will make it very difficult to bring the budget deficit to 3% by the end of 2013.
This eternal question, as old as humanity, has been answered in different ways over time.
From an exciting conference, bringing together, with no other purpose than that of exchanging ideas, somewhere in the U.S. this week, about thirty people of fifteen different nationalities, I glean some conclusions that perhaps can be useful to our discussions.
Like previous governments (except for, a very old one, that of Pierre Mauroy in 1981), the present government considers that it can neither pronounce the word discipline, nor let it pronounce by any member of its majority. It sees there the guilty admission of a desire to involve all the French people in the national recovery effort.
When the income of a person, family, company, association, university, hospital, or public authority stagnates or declines, the natural reaction of the person who has the handle on the purse strings is to refuse to cut spending, to try to do everything to increase his income
Privé de l’aide européenne et internationale, l’Etat grec pourrait faire défaut avant fin juin. Le risque principal, aujourd’hui, se situe au niveau des banques grecques : le risque de bank run massif est chaque jour, plus important. Il précipiterait l’effondrement du système bancaire grec dans son ensemble, déjà vacillant.
Picture the scene: several climbers linked together by a single rope, elastic, exhausted after a hard climb of a peak never reached, fighting halfway point to the top.
At the height of summer, when the electoral ashes and confetti have settled and have been collected, the country will find itself in an extremely dangerous situation.
Let’s take seriously the second-round campaign. Let’s once again increase our first beliefs and truly seek in two weeks, who can best help France avoid the fate of Greece, which awaits, it is almost certain, Portugal and perhaps Spain.
