Remember when just a few short hours ago, the ECB's Mario Draghi said that under no circumstances should the ECB's historic launch of QE be taken by anyone as a substitute for legitimate fiscal and other labor reform: as in the one thing the continent that has youth unemployment higher than 50% in various nations truly needs, instead of a Dax at record highs? Well, we are happy to report that just hours after the launch of QE, French trade unions and employer groups failed to reach agreement in a final bid to spur job creation in a moribund market by simplifying rules on worker representation in firms, the government and unions said.
From Reuters [6]:
Socialist President Francois Hollande had asked the parties to strike a deal by end-2014 to lift bureaucratic "blockages" to hiring, including rules that force companies to pay for in-house works councils and health and safety committees once they hire their 50th worker.
"Today's plenary confirmed the end of negotiations, and thus their failure," a source from one of the employer groups said. Economists have long pointed to excessive bureaucracy as a major in France's high unemployment rate, currently stuck above 10 percent.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in a statement that "necessary compromises" should have been possible in the talks. "However, the absence of an agreement cannot amount to an obstacle to reform to take the country forward," Valls said. "It is now up to the government to take on the modernisation of social dialogue in business."
He added that he would hold a meeting of the various parties on Feb. 19 to discuss the next steps.
At that meeting nothing is expected to happen either, because thanks to Mario Draghi, Europe's politicians just bought themselves a few more months in which they can continue their path of clueless incompetence and corruption, all of which is of course blamed on "austerity."
However, Valls probably should advise the French impoverished workers, at least those who still have a job, to do the one thing that QE does fix each and every time, if only until the central bank runs out of bonds to monetize: just BTFD.
