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French weekly magazines review 16 September 2018

President Macron's anti-poverty plan fails to halt his nose dive in the polls as his image of rich man's President worsens.

French weekly magazines
French weekly magazines DR
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President Emmanuel Macron's political woes continue to dominate the news, after widespread criticism of his eight-billion-euro anti-poverty plan.

The package designed to ensure that "no-one gets forgotten" and aimed at winning back leftist voters fell flat according to Le Canard Enchaîné. The

The satirical weekly says Monsieur Macron's decision to delay the release of  the plan now instead of the originally date in the holiday and World Cup month of July backfired.

Le Canard claims that his critics interpreted the delay as a message to the poor that they can wait since they weren't going on summer vacation.

The weekly analysestwo opinion polls which confirmed that Macron's approval rating fell by between 10 and 12 points in August. It describes the ctastrophic figures as a signal that the man elected as an “anti-Hollande model” had fallen out of grace with mainstream France.

The satirical weekly says it is because of Monsieur Macron's economic results which are less impressive than those of his predecessor. Le Canard also attributes his alarming disaffection to the alleged arrogant manner in which he conducts his Presidential business.

Le Canard says that on the eve of launching his anti-poverty plan, Macron who drew fire in June for complaining that the state spends "crazy amounts of dough" on welfare without lifting people out of poverty, Macron had launch at the Elysée with the President of Switzerland a tax haven.

The magazine says the poor will surely appreciate that while Monsieur Macron called for cuts in health and social expenditures, he hasn’t stopped organizing royal banquet at the Versailles Palace for the likes of Japan's Crown Prince who paid an official visit to France this week.

L'Express revisits the Benalla scandal which broke out in July and which the president, is in a haste to put behind him.

It far from over, according to the publication, which claims it is stuck to President Macron like the sticking plaster on Captain Haddock's jacket in the Tintin adventure, "The Cauculus Affair".

L'Express also observes that far more significantly, public opinion now considers the affair a direct consequence of the “republic of friends” entertained by Macron, since coming to office.

Marianne gasps for breath, after revelations about the crazy amount of dough the French treasury has lost due to fiscal fraud. According to the left-leaning magazine, France's main tax workers union.

Solidaires-Finances-Publiques" puts the amount at 100 billion euros, 20 billion more since 2013.  Marianne notes that the amount is one and a half times the total income tax paid by French citizens.

By the weekly's calculations 100 billion euros will be enough to fund the budget deficit standing at 82 billion euros and to finance France's ecological transition program said to cost another 7 billion euros.

Several publications mark the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers --precipitating the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s.

The 150-year-old lender, America’s fourth largest investment bank, went down on the night of the 14th to the 15th of September 2008 after contracting risky debt holdings made up of subprime mortgages.

L’Express reports that with assets worth 493 billion euros, Lehman Brothers was rated too big to fail by Wall Street traders until American authorities abandoned it to its fate.

The conservative publication asked Jacques Attali who served as French President Mitterrand's cabinet chief for 14 years, if the world has learnt the lessons of the bankruptcy. 

The French economist says the markets have, but only to a certain extent, because Western banks are not as fragile as they were ten years ago.

But Monsieur Attali warns that the "crazy debt-piling policies" pursued by the Trump administration, have left the global economic markets at the mercy of another tremor.

Attali also points to the danger of concentrating the world's wealth in a few hands and calls for radical changes in the model of society holding sway in Western countries as they tackle issues as debt-servicing and unemployment.

Jacques Attali's piece in this week's l'Express claims that the stakes are about a matter of life or death if ecological norms are not imposed on the markets.

 

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