US firms fall out of love with France, survey says

The return to power of France’s Socialist Party in the spring of 2012 after a 17-year absence has not gone down well, it seems, with American businesses with operations in the country.

According to a recent poll of the heads of French branches of US companies, France's attractiveness as a place to do business has plummeted in the last year.

The survey, carried out by the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris along with consulting firm Bain and Company, revealed only 22 percent of the heads of the US companies in France see the country as an attractive place to do business, down from 56 percent when the same poll was carried out in 2011.

The chief reason for the steep drop it seems, can be explained by May’s presidential election when Socialist François Hollande ousted conservative Nicolas Sarkozy from the Elysée Palace.

Of the 52 leaders of French operations of US companies, 65 percent of respondents cited the election of a Socialist government as having a negative impact on attractiveness.

The US business leaders were also critical of the Socialist government’s economic policies, which include its controversial 75 percent tax rate on earnings above one million euros, According to 85 percent of respondents the policies have also had a negative or very negative impact on the attractiveness of France for foreign investors.

The poll has seemingly largely been ignored by France’s leftwing press but it has been used as ammunition by the country’s centre-right newspapers with Le Figaro acidly remarking that US investors had sent a “clear message” to Hollande.

Note EU-Digest: France and Europe need not to worry too much about the comments from the business sector. They always react to any force trying to curb their totally unrealistic tax benefits and ability to exploit corporate loopholes to the fullest. 

Read More: US firms fall out of love with France, survey says - FRANCE / BUSINESS - FRANCE 24

Europe Must Fight Back Against US-UK Speculative Attacks - by Webster G. Tarpley,

The speculative attack by Wall Street and City of London banks and hedge funds against European countries, European banks, and the euro is now reaching a crescendo. The current European crisis does not derive primarily from economic fundamentals, but rather represents a cynically planned assault carried out by Anglo-American financiers, whose philosophy is the traditional Beggar My Neighbor. The goal is to shift the epicenter of the world economic and financial depression from London and New York onto the continent of Europe, and this operation has already partially succeeded. London and New York are exporting their own derivatives depression into the EU, using credit default swaps, corrupt credit ratings agencies, and their entire panoply of financial dirty tricks. We are not dealing here with the normal functioning of markets; we are dealing with all-out economic warfare.

The Wall Street zombie bankers are aiming at a chaotic breakup of the euro with the intention of buying up the old continent at bargain-basement prices. The jackals of the City of London are seeking to smash the euro as a means of breathing new life into the moribund British pound, thereby masking the fact that Britain is more bankrupt than the vast majority of EU member states. The Anglo Americans are also acting to destroy the euro as a possible competitor for the dollar in the role of world reserve currency for the pricing of oil, the activities of international lending institutions, and other functions. The dollar is now so weak and unstable that it can only survive through the downfall of all the alternative currencies.

Because of the arrogance and stupidity of the Eurocrats and Eurogarchs who are running Brussels today, and especially because of the monetarist incompetence of Trichet and the other officials of the European Central Bank, resentment against the euro and the ECB is rising in a number of European states. But those who are being swept up in the anti-Euro hysteria need to ask themselves why they have chosen to advance the destruction of the euro, when this project coincides so totally with the intentions of the Anglo-American financiers, who are clearly the biggest enemies of Europe and of civilized humanity in general. Many of the anti-Euro agitators have not thought concretely about where the successful accomplishment of their current campaign would actually leave them. It is certainly reckless and irresponsible to propose the destruction of the euro without having a viable and concrete alternative in mind.


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