Word: touati
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...individual, a business owner or an entire state and you build your debt level to 70%, 80%, 90% of your revenues, you soon won't be able to pay the interest on your borrowing - much less the principle - and you'll default," says economist Marc Touati, deputy director of the Paris-based financial-services group Global Equities. "We're not there yet, especially for all the nations of Europe. But there are several, including France, that simply must cut spending, deficit and debt dramatically, and soon - or things will get very ugly." (See the worst business deals...
...debt involved isn't as much, but when levels get too high and financing them just isn't possible anymore, the entire thing will come falling down," says Eric Grémont, co-founder of the Paris-based Politico-Economic Observatory of Capitalistic Structures. To avoid this, he and Touati both say that states must freeze their spending at current levels to speed up a return to economic growth. But when that happens, they add, governments must also start slashing budgets, reducing expensive state services and cutting jobs - all the things that tend to weigh economies down in good times...
...become an executive in a top French company, be asked to serve on a board or be tapped for a high civil-service post, you've got to have the right background, the right education, and have the powerful network of allies to help you get there," says Marc Touati, deputy director of the Paris-based financial-services group Global Equities. "Most are well-trained and talented people, but there are lots of people like that who have no chance at those top spots. Like it or not, France is run by a caste...
...Touati notes that this system has gone largely unaltered for 40 years, despite other changes that have taken place in the economy: nationalization, socialization, privatization and pro-market reforms. Grémont says that such enduring élitism is difficult to challenge in normal economic times, which is the main reason some French executives continue to fear that the current global recession could morph into something more serious: a 1930s-style meltdown capable of shaking the entire economic structure to its foundations. Were that to happen, chain-reaction bankruptcies of companies could force the French state to step...
...There's lots of cash that's been tucked away around the world by people whose profit-taking will lift markets after big sell of periods, but that won't change the big picture," Touati says, "Only signs the U.S. has hit bottom and on the rise again will fuel a real rebound of international stock markets...