France Enters Recession

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The French economy, which is Europe’s third largest, will slip into its first recession in 16 years in the first quarter of 2009 according to the Bank of France this morning. French gross domestic product will shrink 0.6 percent in the three months through March, following a 1.1 percent contraction in the final quarter 2008.

Basically France has steered clear of “technical” recession to date due to very slight growth (0.1%) acheived in Q3 2008. That being said, it is also the case that the French economy is certainly the “eurozone big 4” economy which is holding up best during the current crisis. Doubtless when all this is over we will spend a good deal of time talking about exactly why this is.

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About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

3 thoughts on “France Enters Recession”

  1. I would guess that the French economy is holding up best because it’s not so vulnerable to the risks of the other three, which are a mix of banking, property and export dependency.

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  3. The French economy is a net beneficiary of funds from Germany and the UK, and has lagging performance indicator.
    In 2009, the leveraged French economy will suffer more than Germany or the UK.

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