Ah France ..
France is a country that makes you want to bang your head on the wall sometimes..
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We aim here to bring you regular updates on factors and events impacting financial markets in the Middle East and North Africa region with an accent on foreign exchange and rates.
We also aim to bring reflections on certain topics and subjects, close to recent events, which we think are worth stopping on .
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It is a country ideally placed in Europe, alas not at its centre anymore as Europe has grown and even less at the centre of the world like some of our ancestors would have liked to believe in a different era.
But still , it is reasonably big on a European scale, diversified, oceans, seas, mountains, country side, a landscape that inspired for decades impressionists and other painters. Great food . A certain atmosphere that attracted artists, writers, philosophers , musicians from all over the world. And then all of them around a bottle of red or white reimagining the world. Read that book from Ernest Hemingway, " A moveable feast" , on his early years as a struggling writer in Paris. France has everything. No disrespect to Germany but whereas most want to buy a Mercedes or a Porsche if they can , they still prefer to come to France after.
Today, I am not sure all those above, at the avant-garde of creation and thinking, would be so keen to come to France and Paris. The country is about to shut down on itself. Seems that Macron's gamble has massively backfired and the political moderate centre will be eviscerated. Close the borders. Trump will be happy and Putin will think it was money well invested.
Take the also dispiriting French football team. If the far right wins, they might put some quotas for the team. Talking about the French football team, they are supposed to be top favourite for the Euro Championship. Well they are hiding their game pretty well then. Just like in Qatar in 2022 for the final ! I read recently an interview from a former player of the winning team in 1998 . He was saying that he was still waiting for an explanation from his former teammate and now France's coach on why the French team woke up close to the end of regular time.. Just like now.. Apathy..
Mario Draghi, former ECB Governor and Italian Prime Minister is due to release a report on how to increase competitiveness in Europe. Already some criticism. But at a time of major challenges, from security to climate change, from ageing demography to immigration, rising debt and loss of competitiveness, where China has such an economy of scale that it can dwarf almost anybody , where the US are also favouring its owns and what Trump coming back means for European security ! Who knows the name of the European Commissioner for foreign affairs ? Even though it is much closer , what is the weight of EU in the Middle Eastern tragedy ? Zero .
In most places in the Gulf, you can get almost anything online, official documents and all. I was recently trying to obtain a copy of the title deeds of a property in France. The Notary office where the transaction was registered told me they couldn’t deliver it now : they are trying to find an archivist but can’t hire anyone. Whatever the details of this case, France has one of the highest tax take over GDP and one of the highest share of public sector again over GDP. Some will say benefits across the board are too generous and don’t incentivise. One thing is sure, I probably will have to wait for the summer to be over to get my title deeds ! Who wants to work summer time on the Riviera !
We can sit and moan and cry and say it was better before and board up the windows and doors . Or we can realize that European countries can't play this game on their own : they need to team up !
Talks are around to concentrate the defence industry for economies of scale and efficiency but no ministers will give up what he thinks he has and so we'll go nowhere again..
Europe needs to wake up or it will be just a beautiful museum..
