Archives Jan. 1, 2018

2018 has surprised. The 2017 year had come to the end in good conditions. It was “planets alignment” with a very low oil price, interest rates near zero and a favorable global environment. French growth reached its highest level for a long time: during 2017 2^nd half, it had been near 3%, on annualized rate. That did not last. International tensions increased all along the year with the promise of a trade war between China and the U.S., an unprecedented hostility of the American president toward Europe and a brutal rebound of oil prices. Inflation was making a ...

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Even if no major financial crisis has occurred during the ending year, it will remain everywhere as a bad vintage. The major financial markets have made this analysis and have heavily fallen during the fourth quarter. For several months, the exceptionally long duration of the economic cycle which followed the 2007-2008 crisis had surprised. Many experts had announced its end and predicted a new serious financial crisis with their eyes oriented toward China and consequences on the whole planet. That did not happen but there is unanimity to note that the world has become more fragile and that every country ...

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The measures Emmanuel Macron has announced to try to answer to the deep discontent in France which is expressed through the « gilets jaunes » movement carry, all of them, the same logic: to rise employees purchasing power whose pay is inferior to the average. These increases or bonus are partly financed by the State because they are not subject to taxation or they result from an increase of current bonus exempted of social charges. A small share will remain to be supported by employers. The objective is to reduce the tensions through a diminution of inequalities but the main consequence will ...

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