Is France going to the the next domino to fall as Eurozone implodes?

[puisseguin]

France aren't in real trouble yet, Italy were looking pretty wobbly last year - I dunno if things have improved there yet.

 

It's all been abit quiet, maybe things are slowly recovering?

 

It doesn't seem like that according to this.

 

http://rt.com/business/french-economy--recession-302/

 

Just a week after France announced an ‘end to austerity’, it has fallen into recession for the first time in four years as spending and exports contract.

 

Official figures show France has returned to its second recession in four years, as the economy shrank by 0.2% in Q1 of 2013, after shrinking the same amount in the final of quarter of last year, which has brought the Guardian newspaper to declare a ‘triple-dip recession’ in the eurozone’s second largest economy.

 

The preliminary data from the INSEE statistics agency shows that overall investment contracted 0.9 percent in the first quarter.

 

Business investment was down 0.8 percent, and exports contracted for a second consecutive quarter, shrinking 0.5 percent. Household consumption fell by 0.1 percent, the first time since Q2 of last year, despite high spending on energy over the winter season.

 

The data is more bad news for President Hollande and the Socialist government, who were elected on the promise to end austerity, and one year later, have failed.

 

30,000 leftists demonstrated against Hollande and the Socialist government, who have not delivered on their promise of 0.1 percent growth. The protesters’ message was clear- austerity isn’t working for France.

 

“We are here to tell him, Mr. President, time is up and you need to start changing things,” one protester, teacher Thibault Sans, told RT.

 

First on the agenda of change is unemployment, which in France is expected to hit at least 12.2% this year, up almost 1% from 11.4% in 2012.

 

French employment is also well below the Eurozone average, but much lower than crisis headliners Spain and Greece, where unemployment is expected to peak at 27%.

 

A survey of 1,027 French people between April 26 and April 28 showed that only 11% think Mr. Hollande will succeed in his objective of getting unemployment to start falling by the end of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

 

Earlier this month, the European Commission warned that France would enter recession this year and said the eurozone's economy would shrink by 0.4%. The commission also forecast a rise in the deficit of 3.9% of GDP, much higher than the acceptable EU deficit target of 3%

 

The most explicit of warning signs may have come two weeks ago when the European Central Bank cut its key interest rate from 0.75% to 0.5%, a clear indication of a deepening crisis, with no improvement on the horizon.

 

According to a Reuters poll of economists, there will be no strong recovery until at least 2015.

[Mecky]

The choice was François Hollande or Nicolas Sarkozy, not much to choose between them.

 

Correctamondo

[L00b]

Latest idea by Hollande's leftist think-tank to solve France's national debt: a 17% haircut on estates > €30k, payable in cash and/or shares (e.g. if your house is worth €100k and you haven't got owt else, State gets put on the deeds to the tune of €12k (100k-30k, 17% of 70k) if you can't pay that €12k outright).

 

Would allegedly wipe out the national debt overnight, give or take a few €millions.

 

I'm just waiting for Balls to float that idea over here pretty soon (he's usually not too long behind mimicking Hollande's populist rethoric)

[geared]

Do the French have an equivalent saying to 'lead balloon'??

[LeMaquis]

Latest idea by Hollande's leftist think-tank...

 

A leftist think-tank who has worked for those bastions of socialism Barclays, BNP Paribas, Boris Yeltsin and Nicolas Sarkozy.

[Mister M]

it sounds like there's quite a few people on this thread hopeful that France will plummit

[andygardener]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2013/05/25/does-france-have-right-plan-revive-its-economy/bDTJ1qcgF7oddGvbdFkMXK/story.html

 

PARIS — The man charged with reviving France’s shrinking economy and attracting businesses to invest here is gaining a reputation for doing the opposite.

 

As the country’s first-ever minister for industrial renewal, Arnaud Montebourg has told the world’s largest steelmaker it is not welcome in France; exchanged angry letters with the head of an US tire company he was supposedly wooing; scuttled Yahoo’s offer to buy the majority of a video-sharing site.

 

Montebourg, a 50-year-old lawyer from Burgundy, is the public face of President François Hollande’s plan to revitalize Europe’s second-largest economy, which is in recession and grappling with 11 percent unemployment. The plan is to make the French economy more competitive globally — especially for manufacturers — by making it easier to fire workers, offering a payroll tax credit, and investing in small businesses.

 

Economists have praised the labor reforms as a step in the right direction. But mostly they say France’s economic plan is all wrong: It is too complicated; it favors a top-down approach to innovation; and it ignores some of the most serious problems plaguing France’s economy, such as high labor costs.

 

And then there is Montebourg, whose public spats with international companies and efforts to block layoffs are making France look like an unappealing place to do business.

 

An object lesson in how not to revive a country in the grip of a downturn.

 

Putting Montebourg in charge of attracting foreign investment was always completely insane. The guys a bolshy communist who hates foreigners, what end result did Hollande expect?

[L00b]

A leftist think-tank who has worked for those bastions of socialism Barclays, BNP Paribas, Boris Yeltsin and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Since when is a person of left perusasion not allowed to work in private employment?

 

Since when does employment dictate political beliefs?

 

I'm all ears, LM.

[LeMaquis]

Since when is a person of left perusasion not allowed to work in private employment?

 

Since when does employment dictate political beliefs?

 

I'm all ears, LM.

 

You painted the plans as coming from a leftist think-tank associated to Hollande. Reading the article it has nothing to do with Hollande and is just the idea of one person who has also worked for Sarkozy as well as others. You could have said it was a think-tank linked to the UMP or to BNP Paribas but you thought you'd be clever and attach it to Hollande so you could try and discredit him over something he has nothing to do with. You just tried a dirty right-wing trick and failed.

[WeX]

it sounds like there's quite a few people on this thread hopeful that France will plummit

 

Frances situation is validating the position of those who said all along you cannot spend your way out of debt. The red brigade who say we should heavily tax the rich and ditch austerity are very quiet when it comes to France. They know its a shining example of how these ideas can go totally wrong and put you in even more of a mess.