The European Central Bank's decision to raise its base rates by 25 points has drawn a lot of criticism. It justified it by the persistence of an inflation level above 3% in the euro zone, well above the 2% threshold that it has set itself as a target, in accordance with its status. But this inflation comes in a context of economic stagnation and not at a time when excess demand in Europe is at the origin of price increases.

A debate of the same intensity exists on the other side of the Atlantic, but in a completely different ...

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The publication by INSEE of the mediocre results of the French economy in the 1st quarter with a 0.1% drop in GDP (against 0% in the first estimate) only confirms previous analyses. But past economic policy mistakes such as a family policy penalising those with above-average incomes or the desire to raise the retirement age while companies hardly recruit anyone over the age of 55 or the concentration of tax reductions on low wages which discourages the use of highly qualified jobs,  are not enough to explain the structural weakening that the country is facing.

Bureaucratic inflation, which manifests ...

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The succession of bad figures concerning the French economy since the beginning of the year, zero growth, inflation above 2%, unemployment on the rise with a rate back above 8%, trade deficit that is not being reduced and finally public deficits and debt at worrying levels, has not given rise to sufficient reflection to identify the causes and suggest solutions. This is all the more disappointing given that major elections will now be less than a year away.

The discourse boils down to transferring the reasons for these obvious failures to others, those that preceded it (everything began to go ...

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