Not as much as you might think, argues The Economist in a long, Christmas-special piece about French anti-Americanism (article freely available to non-subscribers) :
In one 2004 poll, 72% of the French had a favourable view of Americans, more even than in Britain (62%) or Spain (47%). Some 68% of those questioned in another poll [...]

Many thanks to David for offering me a chance to raise my profile just before the second edition of the Satin Pajama Awards with a two-weeks guest-blogging stint here at AFOE.
For the 99% of you who don’t already know me, I usually display my limited knowledge of economics and politics at my own blog [...]

According to the French writer Rabelais debt and deceipt are almost invariably inextricably linked. So it is appropriate that it should be a French banker - Michel Pébereau - who takes it upon himself to try to bring this harsh reality home to a French public which still seems excessively steeped in [...]

I still feel very ambivalent about Nicholas Sarkozy. Clearly France needs reform, and he seems to be the most likely politician to bring it, but some of his words and deeds worry me. His attitude towards positive discrimination as a step towards equality of opportunity for the ‘new French’ is obviously a point in his [...]

First off, Dave at MacroBlog has a good summary of the core of the economic policy programme adopted by the new German government. He also has some to-the-point comments about ECB credibility issues
But the big news today must surely be the surprising state of the European consumer . Perhaps the most indicative reading on the [...]

I think I’d better rephrase that: more overall growth, but a very mixed bag. In deriving aggregate numbers for the zone, four big economies really matter: Spain, France, Germany and Italy. Now each of these economies actually has different characteristics, so it is not clear what ‘the general picture’ means here.
Spain is the European economy [...]

The FT reports this morning that France may be about to ease restrictions on certain highly regulated service industries and on business start-ups as part of a package to create jobs in poor suburbs. It is possible that these initiatives might be a test bed for broader economic reform throughout France. French finance minister, [...]

Some good news on the economic front to counter all that bad news on the social one. The French economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.8% in the third quarter of 2005 (or by 0.7% over the prebious quarter). Driving this growth: strong spending by French consumers. At this rate the French economy will [...]

Morgan Stanley’s Eric Chaney has what I consider to be a very sensitive and perceptive analysis of the economic backdrop to the French urban unrest:
Turning to economic causes, many analysts have pointed to mass youth unemployment as the main cause of the political unrest in low-income suburbs. The numbers are striking: the French [...]

Thanks to Juan Cole I do not have to spend a great amount of time writing and explaining some key elements needed to understand multiculturalism, or the absence of it, in France. I’l give you a few quotes to digest and discuss.
The young people from North African societies such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are [...]