The announcement of the downward revision of the French growth forecast for 2026 by the Ministry of Finance, reduced to 0.4% from 0.7% initially estimated, is not a surprise. The Bank of France had already reduced its to 0.6% in August. But the very negative comments that accompanied it are excessive and the European comparisons unwelcome. In an increasingly difficult international context, including a sharp rise in oil and natural gas prices and a summer marked by a real climate catastrophe, France will escape recession. Germany, after being plunged into it for two years, is barely out ...

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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 energy crisis that the world is going through is not the first, but it could be much more serious than the previous ones. The crises of the late 1970s were said to have put an end to the Glorious Thirty. This concept, based exclusively on an indicator, GDP, which is far from representing all the characteristics of a country, is misleading since growth was strong because in the aftermath of the war, production was weak. It ignores cruel realities such as the stagnation of life expectancy, the ten thousand deaths each year on the roads or the tens of ...

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