France is in Trouble

Things aren't going well right now in France. The economy is in the toilet, so with tax revenues down and entitlement payments up, the government is running a big deficit. This puts France in direct violation of EU guidelines.

One of the reasons is that the French tourism industry is in deep trouble, in particular because Americans have decided that they no longer want to visit. There had been hints that something like this might be coming. I predicted it in April. But just after the war, French business leaders publicly denied that there was any real chance of such a thing. After all, deep down the French and Americans are such wonderful friends. Unfortunately, that came across as "whistling past the graveyard", and in June they began to admit that there was a problem, though they still tried to portray it as being small.

Now it's beyond dispute: it is big and it is important.

USS Clueless

Of course, just about every economy in the world is sluggish. Does that effect ours?

Intriguing, isn't it, that when one mentions a poor economy in California, Leftists state that California's woes are inherited from the woes of its "parent" economy, the United States economy. But when Leftists wail and wuffle about the United States economy, they never attribute it to weakness in the world economy.

"Now why is that?" I wonder.