France

The IMF forecasts that Spain will be within the group of European economies that recorded a higher rate of bad loans above the European average along with France and Italy, because these countries have a high rate of loans on total assets, according to the Barcelona Reporter. As far as estimates of losses for banks and financial institutions are concerned, their financial losses for the period 2007/10 could be around 412 million euros to 2.3 billion euros, but warned that risks to global financial stability "remains high".

Argentina needs to be in an International Monetary Fund program to conduct talks on restructuring its debt with the Paris Club of sovereign creditors, French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said on Sunday. Argentina owes some $6.7 billion in defaulted debt to the club. It wants to resolve the issue as part of an effort to get relations with the international community back on track after the country's 2001-2002 economic crisis. The country can either repay the debt in full, or seek a restructuring, which usually requires a country to be in an IMF program.

The recent highly-publicised suicides at France Telecom may or may not be statistically unusual. But they have certainly caught attention and lifted the lid on the high levels of depression among French workers, the BBC reported. A crisis meeting between French Labour Minister, Xavier Darcos, and France Telecom's chief executive, Didier Lombard illustrated that both sides have begun to regard the industrial suicide problem very seriously.

Even as France and Germany begin to show signs of economic recovery, weaker members of the European common-currency union remain mired in recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. The euro is at its strongest level against the dollar this year, and interest rates suggest investor fears over a debt default by a euro-zone member have eased since earlier in the year. Despite this, the euro zone's toughest times could lie ahead. To understand why, it is worth taking a look at Spain.

France will not impose unilaterally an overall ceiling on bankers’ bonuses after it narrowed differences with other countries over pay at a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers, the Financial Times reported. French officials insisted that in spite of Nicolas Sarkozy’s outrage at what he called the “scandal” of bonuses, Paris would not impose its own cap. The president, who has played to public outrage over rewards to executives in an industry blamed for the economic crisis, had called for the G20 summit in Pittsburgh this month to find ways to cap bonuses.

The leaders of Germany, France and the U.K. called Thursday for the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations to look at ways to cap bankers' bonuses and come up with rules on remuneration in the financial sector at its summit in Pittsburgh Sept. 24, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a change from U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s previous stance regarding imposing mandatory caps on bankers' bonuses. While he agreed with France and Germany on the need to link bonuses to the bank's long-term performance, and not to short-term speculative gains, Mr.

Germany is calling on the world’s largest economies to adopt joint measures to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail” and holding governments to ransom in future financial crises, the Financial Times reported. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said on Monday – following a meeting in Berlin with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France – that steps to prevent excessive risk-taking by large banks should rank high on the agenda of the summit of the Group of 20 largest economies in Pittsburgh later this month.

Emergency growth-stimulating policies are still needed to support continental Europe’s fragile economic recovery, even though Germany and France have emerged from recession, a top European Central Bank policymaker has warned. Axel Weber, Germany’s Bundesbank president, made it clear he would not rush to withdraw the extensive measures taken by governments and the ECB – which he said had helped the recent improvement in economic performance in Germany, the Financial Times reported.

Britain was left lagging behind Germany and France today as Europe's two biggest economies officially came out of recession for the first time in a year, The Daily Mail reported. The French and German economies both grew by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of this year, surprising economists who had expected to see a 0.3 per cent fall.

The French are getting thriftier, and that poses a problem for the European economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. For more than a decade, consumer spending has driven growth in France and buoyed the economy of the nations -- now 16 -- that share the euro. The danger for France and for Europe is that this turns into a longer-term trend.