Companies & Regulation

The latest Scorsese blockbuster is still making the headlines for its novel artistic work with timelines. Does the Wolf, however, have anything whatsoever to say about Wall Street? Very little, and it may actually work to strengthen and entrench any bad practices that remain in the financial world!

In his new book Capital in the 21st century (Belknap Press, April 2014), French economist Thomas Piketty presents a mass of data on asset growth in several European countries and the United States. This information improves the knowledge of our society’s relationship to capital and the divide between the richest and the poorest. Except that the author abuses these data, following 19th century scientific materialism

European growth stutters along as fear of deflation exerts pressure on the ECB to loosen monetary policy further.

It is not forbidden to former socialist countries to reduce the weight of the state and drastically reduce taxes, especially on businesses. This was done in Sweden and Denmark, where unemployment is lower than in France .

Here is a relevant remarks from Professor Florin Aftalion: the word “profit” has disappeared from the public debate to be replaced by the word “margin”. This semantic shift is not trivial: the profit goes to CEOs and shareholders while the margin is under Government control!

A little more than 30 years ago, George Gilder published a book titled: “Wealth and Poverty”. This book became a worldwide bestseller. As a researcher, an economist and an investor, the author showed that government intervention cannot reduce poverty, but economic growth and economic development can only achieve this goal.

GDP in the EU area seems to be growing, but at a very slow pace. Although financial market remain sanguine, the real estate sector presents a mixed picture, with bad news coming from heavily indebted countries. While waiting for better news, the authorities are devoting their attention to the rating agencies.

Six years after the crisis exploded, experts still find it difficult to come up with satisfactory criteria to evaluate the banking industry. The good news, however, is that regulators are gradually becoming aware of how banks succeeded in circumventing the rules.

And in France, there is a high level of unemployment whereas it is low elsewhere. And elsewhere, there is no Labor Code, no unions, no judges, and everybody is satisfied with the freedom of work, as reported by IREF European contributors.

This is the transaltion of an article published by Nicolas Lecaussin on August 14th, 2013

What is the common point between Socialists as Claude Bartolone, President of the French National Assembly, Pierre Moscovici, the Finance Minister, MP Jérôme Guedj, Conservatives as Xavier Bertrand, Health minister during the Sarkozy Presidency, Environmentalists as European MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Nationalists as Marine Le Pen, President of the National Front and her speaker Florian Philippot, and the leftist review “Marianne”? Well, there are all anti free trade! All of them have found the perfect solution to the devastating economic crisis: more Government intervention, less economic freedom.

This little county on the shores of the Baltic Sea will become the 18th member of the Eurozone. That is well deserved since Latvia meets all of the Maastricht criteria.…