This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
As Cars Burn In France, The Industry Of Hope Is Booming
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
New Year’s Eve was the main event. And it didn’t disappoint: 1,193 vehicles were burned in France in the course of a few hours, said Interior Minister Manuel Valls. Up 4% from 2009, when 1,147 vehicles were burned. A tradition no one has the balls to explain. In the days leading up to the annual rite, Valls had promised "complete transparence," in contrast to the Sarkozy government, which had hushed up the numbers since 2009. But it’s a year-round event: 40,244 vehicles were burned during 2011 and 43,568 the year before. Even Valls was “shocked” by these numbers.
But the massive destruction of functional vehicles (most of them paid for by insurance) wasn’t nearly enough to bail out the automakers. New vehicle sales for the year 2012 dropped 13.9% from the already miserable levels of 2011. Only 1.89 million vehicles were sold, a low not seen since 1997, despite the growth of the population. Particularly alarming: sales by French automakers collapsed, PSA Peugeot Citroen by 17.5%, Renault by 22.1%. All hopes had been riding on their new models—the Peugeot 208 and the Renault Clio 4—which hit the market in the fall, but those hopes have since evaporated.
Other automakers got clobbered as well: Ford was down 19.8%, Fiat, which hardly anyone is buying anymore, fell 23.7%, only to be outdone by GM's beleaguered Opel, down 23.8%. But there were winners: BMW was up 2.3%, Mercedes 5.3%, and Hyundai-Kia 28.2%! So the French automakers, like other French industries, have a complex problem: uncompetitive products in a morose market with unemployment that has been climbing with incessant brutality, and a tax quagmire of unprecedented proportions [“Trench Warfare” Or “Civil War” Over Confiscatory Taxes In France].
But there is one industry that has been booming under these conditions. The industry of hope. Française des Jeux (FDJ), third largest lottery in the world, 72% owned by the state, reported revenues for 2012, and they were hot! €12.1 billion, up 6.1% over prior year. An all-time record. Despite the attacks on its historic monopoly by online gambling.
FDJ prides itself in its 26.3 million “clients”—40% of France’s population of 65 million! Its products are sold in 34,300 retail locations: tobacco shops, bars, newspaper stands and, in French possessions overseas, grocery stores and gas stations. One retailer per 1,895 inhabitants—twice as many as post offices. They’re truly everywhere. And they beckon with hope.
Every day, FDJ says, 8-10 million people walk into these places to surrender voluntarily their hard-earned money, their unemployment compensation, or their social benefits in exchange for a tiny sliver of hope. The hope to become an instant millionaire. Alas, tiny it is: of the 26.3 million clients who in 2012 more or less regularly bought these slivers of hope, 41 became instant millionaires. The odds are not good. But unlike French cars, hope sells.
The record performance was aided by an "exceptional calendar," including three Fridays the 13th (there was one in 2011), three propitious dates—November 10, 2012 (10-11-12), December 12, 2012 (12-12-12), and December 21, 2012 (21-12-12). They perked up the spirits of the lottery-ticket scratchers who shelled out €5.4 billion, up 7.5% from 2011. All games combined rang up €10.7 billion, up 3.7%. Sports betters, who went gaga over two international mega-events, the Olympics in London and the European Football Championship, handed €1.4 billion over to FDJ, a 27% jump from prior year. If only Renault could do that.
Of this ballooning revenue, FDJ "redistributed" 95%, or €11.5 billion. The largest chunk, €7.9 billion was paid out to its lucky “clients.” Over €3 billion was shuffled into the coffers of the state (lovingly called "general interest"), the vast majority via a 23.5% betting tax. And €587 million (4.9% of revenues) was paid in commissions to FDJ’s 34,300 retailers—€17,113 per shop, on average, a substantial source of income for these mostly mom-and-pop operations. That was up 6.1% from 2011, and 15.4% from 2010. There is no crisis in the industry of hope.
Hope of winning the lottery has infected even a French street-theater company whose giant marionettes have become famous around the world. It decided to attack a true giant, an evil American multinational. But there are complications: political connections, government subsidies, Coca-Cola commercialism, and awesome art. Read.... French Artists Strike out Against an Evil American Empire.
»
- advertisements -
French gov. needs to encourage more of this because so far car sales are headed down. Maybe they could declare a public holiday called "Burn Baby Burn" or "Voiture Flambe' Day" to encourage car sales.
How much you want to bet Krugman is their financial adviser?
"They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real inter-communication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange."
- George Orwell, Nineteeneightyfour
Life is a test...
Fact or fantasy. Tendency is to drift toward fantasy... TPTB know this and leverage it for all its worth (while at the same time programming the proles to desire to be just like TPTB [by competing within the rigged System]).
Someone on ZH recently commented that 1984 was taken as a play-book instead of a warning (which Orwell intended it to be). Seems that this happens a lot with key writings...
We can do better than burn a bunch of cars.
Pass these orders along to other patriots. Ask them to continue to pass them to others.
This plan will work. These are the last orders you will receive until an opposition government in exile is organized. It is ok that the tyrants read these orders too.
http://www.bob-owens.com/2012/12/what-youll-see-in-the-rebellion/
I don't want ANY government, exiled or not!
Power corrupts. I want nothing that attracts rats!
Time and energy are the only two things one can waste. Use them wisely.
So who is buring all these cars? I remember about 7 or 8 years ago, muslim "youth" terrorized Paris for a week or 2 of car-burnings.
Yes, it the same "youth"
Since 2006, the year of the muslim burning of cars, there are more than 40,000 burned each year since then. The french are not armed......try that in the states. !
No, in the US folks burn shit and riot after stupid sporting events!
Wouldn't surprise me if it were found that in France the events are helped along, or like the fascists do in Italy, instigated by the right-wingers.
"No, in the US folks burn shit and riot after stupid sporting events!" Americans riot after sporting events, it happens. But not to the extent it does elsewhere. Isn't it soccer fans that have the cornered the market on such behavior?
www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/football/egypian-premier-league... www.chron.com/news/gallery/Soccer-Fan-Riot-50682.phpwww.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/12/fenerbahce-soccer-fans-riot...nesn.com/2011/06/argentinian-soccer-fans-riot-after-historic-team http://soccerlens.com/football-violence-worst-football-riots/23093/
No argument from me on this happening elsewhere.
Funny, encountered a conversation just the other day about the soccer fans in Europe being messed up with testosterone in that they're standing and peeing (can't recall the exact details- it's stuff that I'm not all that interested in knowing about).
And in Vancouver (last year?) they had all sorts of vandalism following a hockey game.
I think that if one were to add up all these activities we'd find they far outnumber the car burnings in France. But, we mustn't compare upstanding, event-paying, white sports fans' actions with those of poor, Muslim youth.
It's all stupid.
I live in a Big Ten town. In 2002, a disgruntled local started torching cars in my neighborhood, four in total, two within 50 feet of my house, and another within a block. One fire almost spread to the assistant city manager's house. Very unnerving.
He was never caught, even though we had informal watches. Apparently didn't make the news, either.
His technique was simple, crumple up a bunch of newspaper, stuff it under the engine compartment, light it and run.
Just some mischievous muslim youth getting in the holiday spirit.
Datetnuts roasting on an open Peugeot,
Ahkmed looking down his nose
Time again it’s been said
You mock Allah, you’re dead
Then we’ll torch your Renault.
I believe the chosen euphemism is 'Asian youths'.
You know, nice, amorphous and general as if some mysterious Chinese kids just happened to go berserking.
You don't want to anger Allah on the continent.
Another great line – “we are using sustainable concrete”
OK we did the Spain thingy ……whats next ?
Morocco here we come……………
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEKHG8uvjXk
Anybody see a general pattern here ?
Give them modern toys in exchange for debt……..
When the country has lost all redundancy you pull the rug from under it.
Its the Ceausescu gambit played over and over again.
This is where Irish “austerity” or surplus is ending up.
Its money without a political input.
So therefore we don’t use money.
We use capital tokens.
The $ post 1922 was the first modern global (petro) currency.
The Euro is their perfected abomination.
Ask yourself why the core snake of the 70s did the wage deflation thingy………so that it could export oil inflation elsewhere…..i.e. to Ireland , Spain etc.
These societies are now completely destroyed……….its time to move on to greener pastures.
The dangers of now fully privatized money is seen all around us.
Dork I think the Euro was designed for Europe to end up as the United States of Europe. The system will only work when every country gives up total soverignty to Brussels and a central government and banking cartel are put in place.
What are your thoughts on this?
"sustainable concrete"?
Now if that isn't an oxymoron...
Does it mean it can "sustain" the stresses and strains on its structure?
I'm so tired of the bullshit that spews from academia. I can't even express how I feel due to the prospect of a county SWAT team showing up at my front door.
I'm so sick of the idiotic feces.
McCork and Sockeye, rock on!
France is fucked if it does not get the Franc back............
The entire Macro is fucked because of the Euro.....
Ever hear of this strange concept – “Industrial co-localization”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ezP4K3oF4
It produces nothing net.
Its more labour extraction of value.
The Euro is a expression of pure evil.
The wastage of present intact resources to build more junk is simply fantastic.
Because the Euro is a capital token rather then a money token it must build more and more stuff for export rather then internal demand.
It is much like a Shark – it must keep swimming and hunting.
If not it becomes organic rain for the various bottom feeders.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/PSM_V23_D086_The_deep...
Spain is collapsing simply because it cannot produce any national tokens to use its previous massive investments.
Now France is leaving its southern neighbour which it shares a very long border with to rot in a debt stew while it engages in a manic effort to sell stuff to its former colonies in Africa…………
I think you have identified some of the mechanics and effects of a money/exchange system, particularly in light of who politically controls the levers of that system.
But I also think you overestimate the essential importance of nation-states, as well as the difference between what you call capital token and money token systems.
The monetary system and its control do give the appearance of being the drivers of the economy,
but those factors exist on top of a more general economic foundation.
At its core, what we call the capitalist system rests on the belief (not shared by all cultures) that the world, and all that exists, can be owned, or privatized.
That system operates by:
1) privatizing the natural wealth of the world, all its species, even the activities of its human and other denizens.
The privatization necessarily includes “rights” of individual ownership.
2) The rights of ownership are used to channel power and wealth to the owners. Owners compete to own more, and to prevent what they own being taken away. Monopolies and owner institutions are established.
3) A money system is developed to facilitate the exchange of property and as a means for property owners to extract wealth and services from the non-owners of property. (Imposing a tax on natives has been a traditional colonial method of forcing natives to work or trade in order to get the money to pay the tax).
4) Everything privatized is a commodity and becomes priced. The competition between owners, and the collective actions by owners force every “property” to be judged by its money price, and ultimately its functionality in obtaining more property and services ( profit in money-measured terms).
The capitalist corporation is the apex institution. It has a singular narrow bottom-line goal of profit-making for the “property” it represents. Other properties and also non-properties should they exist become inconsequential. The degradation of environment, humans, and other species may actually increase the profitability of a corporation.
Money token or capital token, whatever “tokens” rest upon such a one-dimensional, nearly nihilistic society is destined to create ever more misery - regardless whether the world had only one nation-state, or a combination of states.
"France is fucked if it does not get the Franc back............"
I SEE little difference in the outcome of France getting the Franc back over the outcome of those buying lotto tickets.
Most would believe Germany to be more of a producer than France, and Germany's future, with or without returning to the Deutsche Mark, is pretty bleak (when viewed against the prevailing grow-or-die meme):
Germany’s Downward Trendhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/opinion/global/germanys-downward-trend...
Both Germany and France rely heavily on exports and on the importation of physical natural resources (most important being petroleum-based ones).
@Seer
As I explained in my posts the Euro is not a money token , it is a capital token.
It must grow outwards rather then use the material already built.
Hence Spain cannot grow outward and so therefore Euros looks for greener pastures as Spain implodes.
The Anglos at least have the option of producing greenback like currency.
There is a lot of energy burned to build more stuff in Africa when just a little energy is required to use much of the stuff already built in Spain.
@THE DORK OF CORK: perhaps, just perhaps, you have to explain quite often what you mean in terms of currencies because you don't use commonly understood terms
the EUR is a fiat currency. a tax token. your terms "money token" and "capital token" would require a definition - by you
take me as example: from what I have understood, you say that France should return to the French Franc and - note the commonly used language - inflate (more than the EUR)
you are advocating the same for Spain, Ireland, etc. - for reasons I have not grasped yet, but involve this "growth outwards"
did I understand you?
@Ghordius
I think of a money token as intrinsic to a nation state ,the euro is divorced from that political machine and indeed any local economic hinterland.
If for example Ireland were to print more euros - because the value of the euro is not intrinsic to the Irish political construct it would in the Irish case suck in imports as the expense of domestic commerce.
So over time you get irrational trade flows between weak but defined political & economic hinterlands.
(its why you got credit booms in peripheral europe as bank credit money (making more stuff) was the only method of growth.)
Think of Spain ....... it cannot grow its energy density (have real GDP / energy growth) ,also however because it cannot grow its money base in a nominal fashion it cannot use its existing internal resources to the max......
All those spanish railways begin to have huge overcapacity..........the investment gets wasted despite its energy efficiency
as people only have a limited amount of capital tokens and no political money tokens.
While nation states normally print money (inflate) so that the private banks that control them can capture the value of fiat via their assets that need not be the case.
They can print money without it being a interest bearing asset on a private bank balance sheet.
That would not create inflation as we have commonly known to imagine it.
It would merely dilute sov holders claims on the remaining productive capacity of a nation.
How else can you explain the general wastage of domestic demand within all (including Germany) Euro countries.
The euro has no relationship with the real business of living.
Its function is to bypass labour in favour of some more machines , even if the ecosystem around it is collapsing because the input costs to the machines it builds keeps rising.
To feed the machines it must extract even more from domestic demand ............and so on .........until it must begin killing people in favour of its machines............its a classic nazi system in that sense.
As People begin to have no value in the european monetary system.
Also Peak oil ($ price of oil) is a euro thingy.
You can clearly see peak oil in 1998 on page 6
http://www.iea.org/stats/surveys/mps.pdf
PS
Even in Majorca of all places. – (pop 0.869m) / capital Palma (pop 0.404m)
Although the main investments came both during and after the crisis began.
Their vulnerability to outside oil dependent capital flows (in the case of Majorca tourism) is obvious.
With the nearest fast ferry Barcelona I think ( I was on it back in 2004)
Palma Metro has seen 312 Million euro invested – reopening in 2008 after some problems.
Some of its remaining metre gauge line of 50 miles~ has been electrified as recently as Y2011 for 30 million
Indeed the Spanish model in particular of truly massive rail investment within a non sov framework is a epic disaster movie of chronic over capacity.
And a great warning signal for all that wish to enter the dreaded euro torture chamber.
Euro Master -
“Your function is to bail out the core
Your function is to bail out the core
Your function is to bail out the core
Your function………………………….”
Conduit economy – “but there is no core.”
“Its a black hole”
” I do not wish to cross the event horizon”
Euro master -
“Your function is to bail out the core
Your function is to bail out the core
Your function is to bail out the core”
Conduit economy -”Yes Master”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4VFqbroi1I
Not to mention the aging nuclear infrustructure, which has consumed much time and resources in the hot fusion field, with no positive results. And a ton of debt and relization to be forth coming.
They need to elect muslims to run France like the USA does.
USA USA! And Our Baby Allah and his Iranian female boss.
Obama is not Muslim. Muslims wouldn't have him. Besides he doesn't worship Allah, he worships Obama.
Leftist dhimmies are already running -and ruining- Europe. Self hating and servitude leftist leaders are useful for the invaders. They just need to sit back and let it happen.
I think the USA including the Pentagon, CIA and Joint Chiefs are bigger dhimmies.
The leftists can scam and steal and no one says a word. Why? Because the leftists are "against" the greedy capitalists.
Yet the leftists actually enact laws to shut out the smaller competitors of the "greedy capitalists," by imposing costs that large companies can abosrb. The whole left-vs-right thing is a false dichotomy.
Serious students of history will note the antecedents of the so-called 'left' in the following quotation, from the original land of "liberty equality and fratenity"
and have no difficulty in transposing them to the current situation in which the inheritors of that other "revolution" of the C18th find themselves.
Citizens! Ayres, Dorhn, Emmanuel(and the rest of those who pull the phony pharoahs'strings)have a plan for you all. Freddie, as much as I credit your sincerity, the Muslim thing is way offa the mark. You gotta learn to see beneath the costumes, or it's gonna cost you big time!
I see broken windows have been replaced by burning cars. Sacre bleu!
You want broken windows? Wait til you see the demolition derby in housing here in the Land of the Freeloader. What better way to jumpstart the economy, after all, than with a National Capital Destruction Campaign?
It worked for Dresden, didtn' it? No wait.
Well...it's better than war.
"House prices never drop,"...is the Party line.
You sure this isn't nothing more than the spontaineous combustion of French made vehicles?