France

I am not going to say a whole lot here in this post because I have been writing non-stop about Europe of late. I just want to share the European links with you. I think what the links show is that the European paradigm is in transition from…

Over the past weekend, Italy's caretaker cabinet formally approved plans to begin paying its overdue bills to domestic suppliers and service providers. Its official arrears have aggravated underlying problems, such as access to credit by…

By Sober Look As discussed earlier (see post) the French economy continues to struggle. The nation's consumer recession is now thought to be worse than Italy's. Markit (Trevor Balchin): - “France has overtaken Italy as having the worst…

Europe is in recession right now, but the US is in a weak but fairly long-lived economic recovery. The difference in economic fortunes owes entirely to differing policy responses in both regions. In Europe, the economic paradigm has…

The ball got rolling in Asia as China's official manufacturing PMI eased to 50.1 from 50.4 in January. The details were poor, even if not that surprising after the HSBC measure. New orders fell to 50.1 from 51.6 and new export orders fell…

France had pinned its hope that threat to EMU would be turned back before the wolf came it its door. The Italian political tensions come at the poor time for France. Its ability to absorb shocks is terribly constrained. Recall what has…

The lessons for China, if I am right, are that China should forego the idea of nurturing national champions and should instead encourage brutal domestic competition. Beijing should also eliminate subsidies to production, the most important…

Many investors understandably have not focused on France. The threat of scandal in Spain, the need for yet another round of government support for Italy's third largest bank and the country's upcoming election have commanded attention. What…

The European Union released figures for Q4 2012 GDP today and they were awful. GDP fell by 0.6% in the euro zone and 0.5% in the entire EU. Stock markets are getting clobbered on the news and the euro is selling off. This is not unexpected…

In November, soon after France and Belgium were forced to pump another 5.5 billion euros into bailed out lender Dexia, the ratings agency Moody's stripped France of its AAA sovereign debt rating. The interesting bit was that Moody's…