Well, it is not as if I relish rubbing salt into old wounds, but this quote from the latest piece by Ben Hall in Paris and Ralph Atkins in today’s Financial Times is just too good to resist.

French manufacturing output rose at its fastest rate for nine years, according to a survey on Monday, confirming that France has become the economic powerhouse of continental Europe. Purchasing managers’ indices for manufacturing showed France performing significantly better than the continent’s other main economies – thanks to robust domestic demand.

Plenty of food for thought in this paragraph it seems to me. As foreshadowed in this earlier post, it is the French economy – and not the German one – which is rebounding sharply, and this seems to be for essentially three reasons:

i) there is still life in domestic demand, due to the fact that demographics are good, and lending to households (at an average rate of increase of 11%) was a lot less during the last boom than it was in the bubble societies (20% per annum in Spain and Ireland

ii) France’s more favourable demography means that the French government has more space for fiscal stimulus (when compared with Germany) which means the “cash for clunkers” can roll on a bit longer.

iii) the combination of these above two factors means that stimulus actually can work, since it can fire up domestic consumption which is not already dead on its feet. That is, the situation is a win-win one in the classic sense (although, as I was arguing at the end of last week, the ECB will now need to do some pretty adroit monetary footwork if it wants to avoid firing up an asset bubble in France, to follow hot on the heels of the one which has just deflated in Spain.

As Jack Kennedy, economist at PMI survey organisers Markit put it:

“The strong recovery in French manufacturing continued in October, with output rising at the fastest pace for nine years. While some of the current strength reflects a rebound from the extreme financial crisis, it nevertheless offers further evidence that the France is towards the front of the pack among developed economies in emerging from the downturn. Domestic demand remains the key driver of growth as confidence continues to recover.”

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Finland, we have recently been told, is the world’s most prosperous nation, and it is deemed to be prosperous not only in monetary and financial terms, but also in terms of the implicit wealth of its democracy and governance. This striking assessment is to be found in the latest edition of what is known as the “Prosperity Index”, an initiative launched by the Legatum Institute, a London-based think-tank. In fact Finland took first prize – up from third last year – and was closely followed by Switzerland and the other Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway – also see Doug Muir’s “debunk” of all this brouhaha here).

Finland was also notable for its recent second-place showing in the latest edition of the Tech-competitiveness index released by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Index, which is commissioned by the Business Software Alliance, analyzes data on 66 countries around the world in an attempt to determine which of them have the most competitive information technology sectors. The study, now in its third year, examines variables like the overall business climate, the pervasiveness of the tech infrastructure, the strength and transparency of its legal system,and the availability of a well-educated and technologically literate workforce. As I say, Finland came in second to the United States, displacing last year’s runner-up, Taiwan.

And if these accolades weren’t enough already enough Finland this year took 6th place in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (having been number one on earlier occasions). The Global Competitiveness Report purports to identify the world’s most competitive economies in terms of their prospects for economic growth.

Given all of this, you would really expect Finland to be doing pretty well during the current global recession, wouldn’t you, what with all that fabulous prosperity and those stupendous growth prospects? So is it? Well unfortunately it isn’t, indeed during the second quarter of 2009 Finland (which was way out in front of Ireland, another of those previous ECB “poster boys”, which only managed to clock up a 7.4% annual contraction ) had the worst recession in the entire Eurozone, well behind the so called “PIGS” who everyone suspected previously suspected would be the ones to drag the common currency area to its downfall and ruin.

So in order to find out what is actually happening in Finland, and to take an inside look at the harsh reality that lies behind all those gleaming reports, let’s take a leap across to the Finnish Statistics Office, just to see what is really going on right now in what some consider to be the world’s most prosperous nation. Continue reading →

Whoever would have thought that some people once called economics the most dismal of sciences? Certainly, as the current crisis goes on and on, those of us who consider ourselves to be economists scarcely are able to find the time to squeeze in a dull moment, even here and there. But even at a broader level, interest in that most dismal of dismal topics – the theory and practice of central banking – seems now to fire up levels of enthusiasm here in Spain that make even the appetising prospect of a forthcoming Real Madrid-Barça football match pale in intensity. Even if it is the case, I have to admit, that the everyday Johnny (or Jill) come lately sitting in the bar still – truth be told – prefers the sports columns of the daily newspapers, or the lacivious details of the latest romantic adventure of one of the rich and famous to a careful perusal of the detailed minutes of the last policy rate setting meeting over at the central bank. Continue reading →