Time.news — Talking about money is vulgar. This is probably why during this campaign, very little has been said about public hyper-indebtedness. The “whatever the cost”, imposed as a state doctrine under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, will be paid for in tears and blood during the next five-year term. Whoever the president, whatever his program, his ideological affiliation, will have as a determining factor the management of this toxic heritage. Admittedly, magical thinking makes it possible to dream of financing debt through growth, but growth and debt are tautologically linked. The proof is that, in 40 years of constant indebtedness, the years of fat cows have not changed anything.
Moreover, the disruptive factors accumulate. Debt is one of the three components of a tripod, like the calamities of Egypt. Inflation and the energy crisis are the other legs. By the end of 2022, the debt should represent 113.5% of GDP according to the Court of Auditors and the IMF, which uses these figures. Over-indebtedness of the French appeared as a moral response, both in the face of the Covid dystopia and in the context of the festival of sanctions, self-confiscations and other bullets in the feet linked to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.
See also: Economic sanctions: a double-edged sword with multiple consequences
The right of inventory is difficult to exercise in the context of a campaign where the outgoing president is absent from the debates. Whatever it costs, you have to put a figure: 30% cumulative debt. Was it proportional to the health threat? How will this debt affect public health as an institution and, beyond that, the health of the French people? One of the paradoxes of the public debt is that while it was increasing under cover of covid, the Social Security debt was reduced by 15 billion, a sign of the drop in investment in the health sector and the denial of care on a period of almost two years. The pretext health has a good back to cover a terrible management.
The distribution of covid expenses obeyed what advice, given by whom? The McKinsey Cabinet, the Defense Council? So many questions that could seem rearguard, because the damage is done. But the consequences of “whatever it takes”, pronounced with great fanfare by Macron, are not thwarted by any macroeconomic contingency plan. The only attempt to offer steering tools will have been the mission of Jean Arthuis, former chairman of the European Parliament’s Budgets Committee in December 2020. These conclusions were based on the idea of controlling expenditure over time and accountability of managers. But what Macron immediately demonstrated as early as 2017 is that any crisis that enters the narrative of the moment could justify a new set of economic suicide measures, to the detriment of any notion of proportionality, relevance and risk weighting.
To be fair to Macron, France is not the only country to have increased its public debt by almost 30% during the Covid break. the delirium tremens was shared by most G7 countries. Overall, rich countries have become significantly poorer, all approaching 100% public debt, relative to gross domestic product. Justin Trudeau’s Canada reached 118% in 2020. A level from which the country with the maple leaf will have a hard time recovering. The United States and its stratospheric debt will have approached the default scenario in March 2021: unthinkable.
The singularity of France lies in the continuity in the red. Since 1975, the deterioration of the public accounts has never been denied. The debt will have been in constant cumulative increase, rising from 14.5% as a share of GDP in 1975 to 120% in 2020 (INSEE). Not a single year has the budget been in balance. Nor will the years of growth have been used to reabsorb even a part of the debt. On the contrary. Whatever the underlying reasons for this state of affairs, they do not respond to an increase in investment, but to operating costs. Even structural dysfunctions, of very long range. The best reference in terms of the history of the debt of the Fifth Republic is undoubtedly the Pébereau report, “Breaking with the ease of public debt”. Report commissioned in 2005 by the Raffarin government, part of which was entitled: “The increase in the debt did not result from a specific effort for growth but, essentially, from a lack of rigorous management”.