On March 17 Bruno Le Maire, French finance minister (their equivalent of Rishi Sunak) unveiled €8.5 billion state scheme to pay French employees ‘partial’ unemployment benefit so as to avoid redundancies during the Coronavirus crisis. One week on, 730,000 employees are already benefiting from this scheme (cost so far: €2.2 billion). M. Le Maire will… Read more
Category:
France
President for the Rich
There have been many recent reports of the generosity of several of France’s richest families giving to the fund that has been set up to rebuild Notre-Dame. Bernard Arnault of LVMH gave €200m and even put his own creative, architectural teams at the state’s disposal. His son, Antoine, was quoted as saying “As caretakers of… Read more
The carers’ revolt?
David Graeber of the LSE has an interesting article on the yellow vests (they are not vests but waistcoats – itself another misnomer of course – but I suppose as we have bullet proof vests we have to accept vests as a translation of what is jackets in French!) movement in France. I think David… Read more