Basically I find it hard to see - if I follow the standard explanations - how it is that an economy that everyone has spent the last five years or so trashing - for its labour market inefficiencies, its profligate government spending and its high level of state intervention - turns out to be doing just fine (or nearly so), while all around are starting to visibly wilt.

I have to point out that maybe “everyone” is just the people you have been listening to, in particular people with an ideological axe to grind aiming to introduce neoliberal “reforms” into France and Germany (I still fail to see why Germany’s social market economy has failed as an economic model as “everyone” seems to claim). But anyway, just here on afoe you find Economic Nonsense About France by Emmanuel on April 16, 2007

Look: I guess we all agree that French economic performance has hardly been impressive of late (though strangely it was better under the rule of those raving leftists of ours) and that some -sorry Jérôme- reforms are badly needed. But I don’t see how that should allow just about every journalist on the planet to casually disregard official statistics in order to pander to the prejudices of a public already convinced that France is the.worst.economy.ever. Just because it’s France doesn’t mean it’s ok not to do your homework.

(my emphasis). The “sorry Jerome” refers to one of Jerome’s posts on European Tribune. You are invited to look at his guest post here on afoe Why Reform Has Become a Dirty Word (posted by David Weman on September 8, 2006) and, again on European Tribune, France is not in decline and the last thing it needs is “reform” from September 10, 2007.

Je pensais a la même chose avec l’obsession des médias sur la crise des subprimes, qui ne sont qu’une petit partie de l’iceberg.

Ca serait un peu comme réduire la crise de 29 au crash boursier.

Er, “competitiveness indexes” are nonsense and always have been. Somewhere around I have a post in which I demonstrated that they are actually somewhat negatively correlated with actual performance; and I’m sure I’ve seen a more formal version of the same idea with the same conclusion somewhere.