Italy Joins The Two-Trillion Debt Club
13
December, 2012
As
Monti, Grilli, and Berlusconi jockey for the headlines, the nation of
Italy will surely be celebrating. Since debt is apparently
wealth, the
Italian nation has just joined an exclusive club of 'wealthy' nations
as its total national debt blows through EUR 2 Trillion.
With the trend now growing beyond exponential, having gathered pace
since the crisis began in 2008, we suspect it won't be long before we
see EUR 3 Trillion (of course entirely backstopped by FT's
man-of-the-year Mario Draghi). It
appears that it's not 'greed-is-good' but 'debt-is-good' that is the
idiom of today's sovereign financiers.
Young
French Losing Hope as Prospects Fade
As
in other struggling European economies, the youth of France face dire
prospects. Some 26 percent are unemployed, and almost as many live in
poverty. Though the problem has been there for decades, ambitious
political programs have improved little.
13
December, 2012
,
He
would prefer to travel to Paris more often, but the ticket costs
€6.40 ($8.37), which is usually too much. He can only manage it
twice a month, says Kafui Affram. Just 11 stations separate Lieusaint
Moissy and Paris Châtelet. It's a 40-minute trip between two worlds,
from a southeastern banlieue, or low-income suburb, to the capital's
downtown area.
Affram
doesn't feel at home in either environment, not in the suburb where
the 22-year-old still lives in his childhood room in his parents'
little house, and not in Paris, where he'd like to see a current
exhibition on Salvador Dalí, the Spanish surrealist artist. That is,
if he had the money.
The
son of Ghanaian immigrants was born and raised in France. He isn't
angry about his situation, just "young and tired," he says.
"I know I should be optimistic and have goals, but it's mostly
all just bleak."
Beyond
France's ailing economy, there is another disastrous statistic at
play. Some 23 percent of the country's 18- to 24-year-olds live in
poverty, according to a study by the National Institute for Youth and
Community Education (INJEP). These are mainly high school or
university dropouts who have little to no access to health care and
limited chances of improving their situations.
Affram
failed his university entrance qualification exams twice, finally
taking out a loan to secure entry into a private art college. He
completed a program in web design, but only worked in the field for
two months.
Decades
of Despair
The
French state has categorized circumstances like Affram's as "very
precarious." This gives him the right to government assistance
in finding his place in French society. Three times a week, he visits
the Mission locale, a sort of welfare agency with career counselling
for unemployed young people. Here, he meets an adviser who tries to
help him reconcile his dreams with reality.
Youth
unemployment in France has been high for some time, but it has now
climbed to 26 percent. For decades, regardless of their political
affiliation, lawmakers have been promising to create a better
situation for young people. But exactly the opposite has happened.
Labor laws protect those who already enjoy steady jobs, while the
economic crisis and recession have limited the number of new jobs
created. Meanwhile, housing has become both scarcer and pricier.
"Something
must finally be done," says Didier Dugast, director of the
Mission locale in Moissy, who reports that the number of those
seeking his assistance has been jumping by some 10 percent each year.
A
new program from Socialist President François Hollande for the
creation of "future jobs" has been in effect since
November. It targets people much like Affram. But he just shrugs his
shoulders and says: "We're used to politicians constantly coming
up with new ideas."
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