Archives Jan. 1, 2017

Interest rate on French 10-years bonds reached 1.17% last Friday, its highest level for three years apart from a short period during 2015 spring. The expectation of Federal Reserve decisions, which rose that week its short-term rates by 0.25% and the political uncertainties in France, just before presidential elections, have provoked for three months a slow increase of  borrowing costs, slightly more important than in Germany, which is the reference on these issues. The spread between our two countries, which is usually 30 basis points rose to near to 70 basis points. That trend has provoked a wave ...

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Record France trade deficit in January has reinitiated the debate about the competitiveness of enterprises and remedies to adopt. This situation is rather paradoxical because the economic policy followed since 2013 has targeted, through tax cuts and social charges reductions, the improvement of their competitiveness. It is what was called the supply-side policy, in opposition to policies which stimulate demand through increase of purchasing power or public expenditures rise.

In January, exports fell by 9.2%, reaching only 37.2 billion euro when imports rose by 2.7%, reaching the unprecedented level of 45.2 billion. The deficit, equal to ...

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Energy transitions issues have taken hold of the French presidential campaign. Some, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Benoît Hamon are reducing it to the stigmatization of nuclear energy, they propose to abandon through the closing of power units in safe technical condition. Others, like Emmanuel Macron or François Fillon, propose a diversification of the electricity mix but are hostile to shale gas exploration. All of them think energy saving investments are the panacea to reduce unemployment, but without defining convincing financial solutions, due to the diversity of the situations.

France is not an isolated case. The American presidential ...

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