While Peter Mandelson lectures the Chinese that they have a moral obligation to get the EU out of a mess that he got it into, and while clothing shortages and price-hikes apparently loom, I thought some soothing words from Fr?d?rik Bastiat might help calm our troubled nerves . (Hat-tip to Robert and Bob in [...]

I can’t help feeling that no sooner do I lift someone up than I find I have to knock him down again. I ended the last post offering a best case scenario excuse for Jacques Chirac, but now another topic lands on my in-tray: France and strategic industries.

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France has just clocked up a record trade deficit for the first six months of this year: 11.193 billion euros. This now adds the French to the eurozone BoP sick room along with Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. Of course oil imports form an important part of the picture, but that doesn’t make [...]

Well, this about beats the lot of them. Yesterday the shares Groupe Danone SA went through the roof on rumours of a takeover by PepsiCo Inc. Dominique de Vil-pin also went through the roof:
“Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Danone was “among the jewels of our industry”…. “We plan to defend France’s interests,” Villepin said [...]

Sunday’s Washington Post had an article by one Anne Dumas that’s been blogged here and there, provocatively titled What’s American and Envied by France?. It starts with a rather shocking assertion that has, unsurprisingly, been quoted in a lot of the bloggage:
[N]ot a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed [...]

Interesting piece in the FT this morning about Jack Lang, French PS politician, and possible presidential hopeful in 2007. Before going further I should perhaps point out that the only thing I really know about Lang is that when he was the Culture Minister, back in the 80’s, he opened a small museum dedicated to [...]

At 75 million, France is projected to have the largest population in the EU (of current members) by 2050, according to French government figures. France’s baby-friendly policies, plus reasonably large immigration seems behind the projected increase (the country’s population is now just over 60 million). By contrast Germany’s population is set to fall to 72m, [...]

The OECD has a new country report out on France:
“France’s rising government debt threatens the sustainability of public finances in the eurozone’s second biggest economy, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned in its latest country report.
The Paris-based OECD said that a lack of control over public spending could leave France unprepared to [...]

I have been trying to write something informative on the current budgetary crisis in the EU. After reading countless articles I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing worthwhile I could add to the discussion. Confusion reigns supreme in this little European?s head and economics have never been my forte - certainly not [...]

Well I’ve been reading about the Germans, the Italians, now apparently it is the turn of the French to feel naustalgic:
“Three out of five French people miss their old currency, replaced by the euro in 2002, a survey for Valeurs Actuelles magazine showed on Wednesday. In February 2002 that figure was just 39 percent.
While the [...]