Posted on 05/01/2012 3:54:33 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
France's economy has weathered the global crisis of the last five years deceptively well, shielded by a Leviathan state and the postponement of hard choices.
Yet the underlying decline that began 30 years ago has gathered speed. France's share of eurozone exports has dropped from 17pc to 13pc since 2000. Spain, Benelux and Germany have done much better.
"France is coddled with illusions," said Jean Peyrelevade, ex-head of Credit Lyonnais. "Economic decline is the brutal, hard, undeniable reality. We are consuming the leftovers of a past prosperity."
The trade account - an iconic indicator for Colbertistes - has switched from a surplus of 2.5pc of GDP in 1999 to a deficit of 2.4pc today. "Since 2005, export growth has fallen significantly below the euro area average," said the International Monetary Fund.
"Current account balances continue to deteriorate, raising concerns about the competitiveness of French exports. These contain a large share of low to medium-tech products that face competition from emerging economies," it said.
Top French companies such as LVMH, L'Oreal or Danone are global giants, and Airbus is no straggler. There are 36 in the world's Fortune 500, compared with 35 for Germany and 30 for Britain. Yet few are in pioneer fields.
Industry has been losing 60,000 jobs a year for a decade. Manufacturing has shrunk to 12pc of GDP, the same as Britain - a country deemed to have "no industry" by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Such matters have hardly intruded on the elections. Mr Sarkozy and Socialist challenger Francois Hollande both aim to cut the budget deficit toward balance by the mid-decade, but neither is remotely close to embracing the sort of shock therapy that Germany went through nine years ago (the Hartz IV reforms) or that Italy, Spain and Greece face now.
There
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The reason why there is no electoral ripples is that there is no dissent from the socialist mentality in France. They are all committed socialists, and it’s unthinkable that they’d abandon the welfare state, no matter how bad it gets.
I like the term "consensual hallucination." Here is my source for this very useful concept.
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