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French are less pessimistic! |
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Tuesday, 02 December 2008 |
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According to the monthly opinion poll BVA the economic confidence index among French people has increased for the second month running.
Last month it was up 12 points. This month it has increased by a further 4 points. The pollsters stress that this does not mean that the French are victims to the old Rudyard Kipling joke “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs – you don’t know what is going on”. The overall outlook is pessimistic and one employee in two expects redundancies in the coming months. The French are however a lot less pessimistic than in previous months.
It may be that the relatively high level of savings held by French households and their very low level of investment in the stock market are related to the present improvement in sentiment. French private savings are 14% of gross domestic product, according to the European Central Bank - seven times higher than in Britain and the United States.
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