How France’s €100 billion national development bank is helping the French economy to thrive and redefining state-backed capitalism

6 comments

1. German KfW is 5 times as big

2. Paywalled.

3. No other European country has an agency quite like Bpifrance: a for-profit, state-owned merchant bank with a mandate to foster national champions. Its wide-ranging lending activities are financed largely by borrowings guaranteed by its ultimate backer: the French taxpayer. And for all the political turmoil at the moment in France, its interventionist policies are likely to find favor no matter which coalition — from the left or the right — ends up forming a new government.

   More than a decade after it was created under then-President François Hollande and his economic adviser — one Emmanuel Macron — Bpifrance exemplifies 21st-century French capitalism: Entrepreneurs build businesses with cash, nudges and nurturing from the state, which in turn wants them to create jobs at home and develop innovative technologies. Explicit in the deal: The government will fend off foreign interlopers if necessary.

4. All forms of capitalism are state-backed. Private property wouldn’t be able to exist without a state using violence to enforce it.

5. Isn’t a lot of money in the French treasury coming from their former African colonies being required to store half of their reserves within it in order to be able to use the CFA Franc as their currency? Which gives France a HUGE amount of power as far as I understand, in particular by keeping raw materials cheap for France. So I would be very cautious about assigning any sort of great benefit to whatever scheme the French use internally – they are still very much exploiting their former African colonies to prop up their domestic economy, just nowadays it’s done “indirectly” with financial instruments.

6. Glad to read that our economy is thriving.