Archives Jan. 1, 2019

In a few days will be celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall fall, on November 9th. The East-German regime was already weakened by the weekly demonstrations in Leipzig. During summer, Austria had opened its border to allow those who wanted to migrate to West Germany to go there. The spectacle of the prosperity of their neighbors they see at the TV every evening was revealing, more than any political speech, the communism failure. The fall of this symbol which was cutting in two parts the historic German capital was unavoidable as the reunification which followed it. Nevertheless, it ...

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The publications of a little reduction of the number of jobseekers during the 3rd quarter, from 3.49 million to 3.36 million and of the 1^st growth estimation during the same period of time, i.e. 0.3%, as during the last two previous ones, have not surprised but have been accompanied with rather accommodating comments. These figures are consistent with the stagnation of both household consumption and industrial production in September.  Enterprises are still investing in taking advantage of very low interest rates but it is still to be proved that they are productive investments and not ...

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A persistent very low inflation rate is worrying. It is a paradox because during decades, governments have taken up a price stability target and central banks had as a mission to act to reach it. We still had, in Europe, the remembrance of the consequences of the German crisis in the Twenties which has not been without relation with the Nazism rise. Today, we are in the opposite situation. Central banks have interpreted their mandate in the opposite direction from what was foreseen at the origin. Instead of adopting monetary policies having as an objective to reduce prices increase to ...

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