This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
UK Vs France: You Decide Who Is Worse
The latest scandalous childish spat in Europe is not between some hardcore religious fanatics in the former Yugoslavia, but between the two countries that traditionally (at least in post-war Europe) have been at the forefront of sense and stability: France and the UK, where things got out of joint after David Cameron vetoed the recent G-27 attempt to bailout French and German banks on the taxpayer's dime, quickly followed up by a media war, and culminating with the idiotic announcement by Bank of France head Christian Noyer who said it is not France who has to be downgraded, but the UK. For our thoughts on this ridiculous statement, which merely confirms how clueless Europe currently is, see here. We will say no more about who is more hopeless between the two - it is pretty clear that in a global coordinated ponzi, everyone is only as strong as the weakest link, especially among the AAA-club: the fact that a central bank head does not, is grounds for great concern... so instead we will leave it up to our readers. Below, courtesy of Reuters, we present a tableau of the key economic dataseries for the two countries, and benchmarked against Europe's strongest economy: Germany. So is Cameron right in saying he is protecting the UK taxpayers by keeping them isolated from the European maelstrom, or is Noyer correct when he says that the UK is far worse off? Readers decide.
»
- 23778 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
"What are you doing in England?"
"Mind yer own bizness!!!!"
Dear Sir,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs
Kind Regards,
The most important fact is that th UK recognises it is in deep diarrhea and has started to impose austerity measures already. And its banks are better capitalised than the French banks. Those TWO reasons are major factors. The French on the other hand still muddle along cluelessly, and if you even whisper the notion of moving from a 35hr week to something more productive, or raising the retirement age, you get punks burning cars in Paris. Of course, the UK had riots as well but that's because they're already feeling the pinch, as opposed to being pissed off at the prospect of a future pinch. And anyway...nobody likes the French...that in itself is a good enough reason to downgrade them.
The Beatles & the Rolling Stones versus Johnny Halliday....'nuff said.
Tyler, i don't know what you have been smoking lately, but it sure was some foul stuff.
UK is in much worse shape than France in every sense of the word.
If it wasn't for Fraud City, there would be no UK economy.
How can you even compare these two, and how can you even try to defend that stupid Cameron geezah when he is a complete loser?
Fraud City will go down in flames while French and the rest of us Europeans pour nice glass of champagne to enjoy the moment.
I am afraid only idiotic announcement is coming from you Tyler, for calling Christian Noyer's statement idiotic
They can print and you can't. Need a perimission slip signed first by Mama Merkel.
Put two pieces of bread in the toaster... Cook one for 4 minutes and cook the other for 6 minutes. After you remove the second piece of bread put them side by side and observe. As you can see one is much browner then the other however in the end they are both still TOAST...
Cameron wants to remain the Financial Fraud Center of the World and if that means he makes some Eurenemies, so be it!
here's a european country the markets seem to really like.. No doubt they too will be destroyed by the excesses of our banking systems...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/swedish-bonds-safer-than-german...
Sweden have the highest tax rate in Europe
Why do all these countries think low tax and no tax for big business and banks is good and healthy for the economy. The banks through leverage and rehypothecation etc have encouraged the elite to think they get everything free and a conveyor belt of society bred customers, employees and infrastructure in which to flourish.. Will the real rambo's go out in the wildernes and show us how you get rich on your own.. or shut the fuck up .. We should always argue the level of welfare we should provide.. but for all the bigger fuckwits than myself who blame every thing on some poor fuckers welfare or food stamp.. should have a good look at what they get for free...and remember how the monkeys felt eating banana in a tree...
uk and france would do well to look at Sweden and learn...
High taxes are good for you -- who knew?
The former Soviet Union had a 100% tax rate.
That worked out rather well, didn't it!
100% is as insane as 0%..and i don't know if Sweden rate is the best.. but the elite will have to adapt... lose their nappies.. and pay like the rest of us ...
Sarkozy's preparing the Normans to onvade the tine Island once again since hje has successfully conquered Libya....needs to move on...keeps the troops busy....maybe he'll even call his buddy, the Dalai Lama to help him out.
Now that france is saying the UK is in worse shape they are both gonna come under increasing scrutiny.
Need to hang together guys. Dont start talking negative shit about the other.
I thought europeans were smart and sophisticated.
Remember Kyle Bass' point - the UK has reccapped its banks, the French have not.
BBC reports.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16207748
French banker says UK should be downgraded first
The chairman of the French central bank, Christian Noyer, has said ratings agencies should downgrade the UK before France because its economy is weaker...
David Cameron of the UK made a decision based upon a single axiomatic fact...Bankers own Governments...and Mr. Noyer needs to recognize that London is where BANKERS (aka HIS BOSS's Boss) LIVES! Therefore, to answer Mr. Durden's question - DOWNGRADE FRANCE...UK is where Bankers live & party...
amaZing!
How do comingled funds from the City of London fit into this equation? Like Corzine, I have no idea.
The UK Current Account isnt in Balance ... FAR FROM .. and NEVER HAS BEEN ... as long as I have been able to read.
In all of this ..remember the UK has a LOoooooong Tradition in RIPPING OF the World . This should be known to anyone .. who knows a little bit of HISTORY ...What the combined Anglosaxons do right now ... is just a repeat of older tactics employed
In the current ECONOMIST .. the EURO is likened with a BORDELLO
If that should be the case .. I would liken the ANGLOSAXON FINANCIAL WORLD with a CONCENTRATION CAMP with Financial Sharks as Overseers
In a choice ..i would every time prefer the Bordello ... which is an ancient solid institution where You get honest labour for Your Money
There was a fascinating debate in House Oversight about the Euro Crisis today. AEI and I talked about the Eurozone being a solvency problem, not a liquidity problem., the Brookings Institute guy kept pretending the Euro Zone is solvent and everything is cool! Josh Rosner gave a great discussion, as usual.
My worst moment was where i said "The Titanic sank in an ocean of liquidity!" after being frustrated by the sentiment that more liquidity is needed.
Also, i said the Fed is out of bullets which made McHenry (the Chairman) look depressed.
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com
Oh, and I said Germany and France are doomed eventually by massive entitlements, debt and slow growth. The Brookings guy said Italy is strong and is running several years of budget surpluses!!! Really? This was after I presented the IMF and GDP data for Italy showing anything but.
Total UK debt is over 1000% GDP... Nº1 in the whole wide world...
panic-wise?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxU-SfW54SI
Monty Python & The Holy Grail - The French Taunting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7zbWNznbs
French Soldier (Noyer): Ah don' wanna talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Sir Galahad (Cameron): Well, is there someone else up there we could talk to?
French Soldier (Noyer): No! Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
What is missing here is a detailed break up of total debt.
More useful would be a comparison of net external debt, which is not generally available.
Private sector liabilities, and assets, are higher in the U.K because of City activities.
the french have done more good regarding america than any country thoughout our short history, period!
vive la france
Apart from settle it you mean?
What language do you speak?
France. They have a commie leader who allowed greedy french banks to gobble up the PIIGS sh*t.
and they are babies...
f*ck em
This from David Finch, head of strategy at Exane BNPParibas.
Eurovision debt contest - Angleterre nul points?
On an otherwise rather dull day yesterday an interesting snippet was the choleric outburst by Christian Noyer concerning the behaviour of the rating agencies.
"The agencies have, frankly, become incomprehensible and irrational. They launch threats, even though (eurozone) states have taken strong and positive decisions ... a downgrade does not seem to me justified based on economic fundamentals," Christian Noyer, head of the Bank of France, said a French downgrade would not be justified - adding that the agencies should begin by downgrading the triple A rating of Britain, which "has bigger deficits, more debt, higher inflation, less growth than us and where credit is shrinking."
This shows a misunderstanding of what ratings agencies are supposed to do and what the rating itself means. Ahead of the possible downgrade of a number of Eurozone sovereigns it is important to understand that the rating is a judgement on the ability of a sovereign to repay its debts, not a vote in an economic beauty contest. Although the health of a country's economy is an important element in making the calculation, it is far from being the only element to take into account when deciding a rating.
Before we discuss these, just as a little aside, some of Mr Noyer's facts are wrong. The UK does indeed have a worse projected 2012 annual government deficit at 7% of GDP vs 4.6% for France and inflation in the UK is higher. But if we look at the official forecasts from the IMF for 2012 France's debt to GDP will be 90% while the UK's will be 85%, so 'more debt' doesn't look right. We can argue about growth, for which governments and official forecasts tend to be too high, but for what its worth the IMF calls for France to grow by 0.1% and the UK by 0.6% in 2012. But these metrics are only part of the story, otherwise Japan would have long ago been BBB-.
There are three important elements that Mr Noyer is forgetting which relate not to the economy, but to the state's ability to repay its debt, the citerion that is the most vital in determining the rating. These elements are the duration and marketability of the state's debt and control of money creation.
1) Duration. The average life of the UK gilts is some 14 years and of French OAT's some 7 years. This is in part simply a measure of what proportion of its debt a country will have to repay in any one year and therefore to what extent it is a prisoner of the markets mood at any given time. For instance next year the UK has GBP 90bn of principal and interest payments to find while for France, which has taken a much shorter term view of its financing policy, the equivalent figure is EUR 315bn. If sovereign markets markets close down in 2012 the way that corporate credit markets shut in 2008 France is going to have a much bigger refinancing problem than the UK.
2) Marketability. UK institutions have very long duration liabilities related to the legacy of defined benefit pension schemes. This creates a natural buyer for long term UK debt, more especially as there is no alternative issuer to buy from in Sterling. Continental European institutions have much shorter term liabilities on average and have the choice of buying the Euro-denominated debt of 17 different nations. France is in competition with all the other countries of the Eurozone when it comes to refinancing its debt while the UK has a monopoly on issuing Sterling denominated sovereign paper.
3) Money creation. In the final analysis the UK has the ability to print Sterling to repay its liabilities. France does not have this discretion anymore, as the ongoing spat with the ECB about monetisation clearly highlights. In the calculation of the rating agencies this is crucial. Of course, if the UK resorts to printing, the Sterling in which you get paid back may well be worth a lot less in external terms than the Sterling with which you originally bought the bonds, but this should not effect the debt rating. The agencies are not making an investment recommendation, but a call on the likelihood of default versus the likelihood of getting interest and principal repaid on time in the currency of issue.
None of this is unknown to markets, which is why the UK pays 100bp less for 10 year money than does France. It's a bit worrying that that some European officials appear not to understand why this is the case.
The main positive betweeen the UK and France is that, in the UK, the profligate spenders & debt-addicts were thrown out, and the people currently in charge know the evils of deficits. Labour will (hopefullly) not be allowed anywhere near the country's finances for decades. Just that alone makes me prefer to have all my money in the UK (if the choice was between the two). Not to mention the fact, as noted above, that IF the UK did in fact want to borrow they wouldn't have to ask Merkel for permission first, as the French have to!
Old Blighty's numbers look pretty grim, but France is hardly the reference standard Christian Noyer holds it out to be. By the way, in French "noyer" means "to drown". Methinks Noyer protests too much...
The French economy is the worse off and these petty attacks describe why. David Cameron gets whats going on in markets while the eurozone doesn't.
The UK is implementing moves to avert downgrade while France and the euozone sail blindly to bankruptcy. The French minister claimed the downgrade of France would be based on politics rather than economics? That's a scary comment from a country right at the heart of this euro mess.
All nations are in a race to the bottom though and the US will not fare much better than europe.
France - 50% final salary state pension without upper limits
UK - £100pw pension
France - Free education
UK - Nah!
France - Undercapitalised banks
UK - Capitalised zombie banks
France - Jonny Halliday
UK - Johnny Rotten
France - The Poodle
UK- The Bulldog
France - Sexy, classy women with gorgeous accents who don't wanna know you
UK - Fat, drunken trollopes with no class whatsoever who you don't wanna know
France - Cheese eating surrender monkeys who grab their ankles at the first rumour of German intervention
UK - We will fight them on the beaches, on the landing grounds, we will never surrender...
Try looking at the average term of the government debt between France, UK and Germany. Et voila - tout est evident.
Another just as important issue is the UK's ability to print money and use it to pay debt. In theory this is more difficult for France.
Are the other people posting on this thread traders - what do you trade?