Other than the “patient of Europe”, that title is no longer due to us. And who says it? Not just any newspaper, but the Wall Street Journal, not the unit. “There is a country in the European Union burdened by a huge debt, by increasing debt costs and by governments that collapse within a few months, and it is no longer Italy”. Game over. Let’s talk about France, Lord and gentlemen. The same that for years looked at us from above, dispensement of penalties and responsibilities. Now it is she who arranged, with the pieces to the budget and a president, Emmanuel Macron, who has transformed the Elisha into an experimental laboratory of economic errors. And now the account pays everything.
To understand each other: the performance of French BTPs (because they are now) has even overcome that of Greece, while the cost of debt is equal to the Italian one. Let’s talk about France, not of Cyprus. Still, the numbers do not lie. In the meantime, while the rudder is held in Paris, in Rome. “Athens and Rome have reduced their budget deficits after adopting painful austerity measures during the debt crisis of the region in the years 2010. Today, Giorgia Meloni is on the way to become one of the first long -lasting ministers in the Italian post -war history, after almost three years of mandate”, reads. Yes, you got it right: Praise Meloni, the pragmatic of the WSJ. Stuff that in certain Italian environments makes Orticaria come.
But let’s go back to France, where the problem has a name and surname: Emmanuel Macron. It is he, for the American newspaper, the disaster director. “He laid the foundations for the current malaise when he introduced large tax cuts after his first election in 2017, without bringing similar reductions to the costs of health care, education and other French public services”. A manual recipe of the perfect technocrat: less taxes to make the markets happy, but public spending out of control to avoid losing votes. Result? A black hole.
“Macron’s policies caused a profound sense of injustice and have been seen as times to lower taxes for the rich and businesses,” he says Xavier Timbeau, an economist of the OFCE. But it does not end here: when Covid arrived, Macron detached another check from 41.8 billion. Then the war broke out in Ukraine and, general panic, others 26 billion in subsidies for energy. Total? A mountain of debts.
And where did we end up now? With a public debt passed by 2,200 to 3,300 billion euros. In full economic stagnation. And Macron? Unable to raise taxes, prisoner of his own liberal populism, he tried to pull the belt only on pensions: raising the retirement age at 64 by 2030, to save 17.7 billion. But even there, a trench war was served against unions and oppositions. The flame square, the yellow vests that seem only on the coffee break.
The beauty – or the tragic, do you – is that while in Paris we dance on the Titanic, we still struggle to recognize that something, perhaps, are doing it better. France sinks, and we … resist. Who would have said it?
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