AGEFI Luxembourg - novembre 2023

AGEFI Luxembourg 16 Novembre 2023 Economie L a Banque centrale euro- péenne (BCE) devrait main- tenir ses taux d'intérêt à leurs niveaux actuels pendant une bonne partie de l'année prochaine, lamajorité des économistes inter- rogés par Reuters estimant qu'une baisse n'interviendrait pas avant juillet, malgré les prévisions d'une récession dans la zone euro. Le mois dernier, la BCE a laissé inchangé son taux de dépôt à 4%après dix hausses consécutives, et les 72 économistes inter- rogés par Reuters du 8 au 13 novembre ont convenu qu'il n'y aurait pas d'autres haussesde tauxdans le cycleactuel.Alors que les marchés financiers s'attendent actuellementàunebaissedestauxenavril, le dernier sondage Reuters suggère que celaest peuprobable, surtout aprèsque la présidente de la BCE, Christine Lagarde, adéclarélemoisdernierque"mêmeavoir une discussion sur une baisse est totale- ment, totalement prématuré". Environ 55% des économistes, soit 40 sur 72, pré- voient que les taux resteront à leur niveau actuel jusqu'au milieu de l'année pro- chaine. Les 45% restants prévoient une baisseavantlaréunionduconseildesgou- verneurs de la BCE en juillet. Les résultats sont proches de ceux d'une enquête réalisée le mois dernier, dans laquelle 58% des économistes interrogés neprévoyaient pasde baisse avant la réu- niondejuillet."Ilnefautplusgrand-chose pour que la zone euro entre en récession", écrit Peter Vanden Houte, économiste en chefde lazoneeurochez ING, notant que la BCE a reconnu que la croissance a été plus faible qu'elle ne l'avait prévu. "Mais cela ne signifie pas que la BCE sera pressée de réduire ses taux (...) Nous ne prévoyons pas de baisse des taux avant l'été 2024." Une réduction des taux plus précocequeprévunécessiterait probable- ment une récession suffisamment pro- fonde pour justifier un assouplissement desconditionsmonétairesmêmesil'infla- tion reste supérieure à l'objectif de 2% de laBCE.Plusde40%deséconomistesayant répondu à la question, soit 15 sur 35, s'at- tendent à une nouvelle contraction ce tri- mestreaprèsquedeschiffrespréliminaires ont suggéré que l'économie dubloc s'était contractée de 0,1%au troisième trimestre. La contraction serait limitée, la prévision la plus faible pariant sur un recul de 0,3% du PIB au quatrième trimestre. Une forte majorité d'économistes, 24 sur 29 ayant répondu,estimenteneffetquelarécession enzoneeuroseraitcourteetpeuprofonde. Trois l'estiment longue et peu profonde, un longue et profonde et un autre courte et profonde. Pour l'instant, la Réserve fédérale améri- cainedevraitassouplirsapolitiqueunpeu plus tôt que la BCE, d'ici la fin du deuxième trimestre, bien que la plupart des économistes affirment que le risque le plus important pour leurs prévisions est qu'elle agisse plus tard. L'euro pourrait s'affaiblir et créer de l'inflation importée si laBCE, qui a commencé à relever ses taux plusieurs mois après la Fed, assouplit ses taux avant sonhomologue américaine. Dans l'intervalle, les pressions sur les prix devraient rester stables. L'inflation totale, dont l'objectif est fixé à 2% pour la BCE, est tombée à 2,9% le mois dernier, son niveau le plus bas depuis plus de deux ans, après avoir culminé à 10,6% en octo- bre 2022. Elle devrait rester à peu près au même niveau qu'aujourd'hui au premier semestre de l'année prochaine et s'établir enmoyenne à 2,7%en 2024. L'inflation sous-jacente devrait s'établir enmoyenne à 5,0%cette année et à 2,6% l'année prochaine. Le taux de chômage ne devrait augmenter que légèrement pour atteindre 6,7%, contre 6,5% actuel- lement, d'ici à la finde l'année 2024, selon le sondage. Source :Reuters La BCE maintiendra ses taux à 4% jusqu'à mi-2024 ©Reuters P resentationbyAdelinRemy, editor, onOctober 20, 2023 at the seminar “Information, désinformation, « FakeNews », un état des lieux”, an inventory” orga- nizedbyPétrusse a.s.b.l. Agefi Luxembourg AgefiLuxembourg,thefirstfinancialnewspa- perinLuxembourg,wascreatedin1988andre- ports every month (newspaper) and every day (newsletter: le Fax ) in French and English on financial, economic, po- litical, social and cultural and Eu- ropeannews inLuxembourg. Agefi is distributed on newsstands in the Grand Duchy and by sub- scription and available online at Fac- tiva DowJones, which ensures worldwide distribution. The Agefi In- ternet Archive (www.agefi.lu ) consti- tutestheoldestprivateonlinemediadatabase inLuxembourg (1996). Most articles are written by experts in economics, fi- nance, banking, insurance, etc. Thismeans thatwhen the editorial staff of Agefi Luxembourg takes up the penitself,itdoesnotexpressitselfinapersonalcapac- ity and therefore does not give any political, societal, philosophical or religious opinion but, of course, opens its columns toall opinions,whatever theymay be. Agefi Luxembourgwants to informand only in- form, withdepth. Objectivity and specializationpay off It seems that 58% (France) to 80% (Germany) prefer to read and watch objective news. (1) And the stock market values specialized financial journals: before beingsold, Euromoney waslistedatmorethan4times turnover. Even today, Pearson ( Financial Times ) is quoted at twice the turnover while for News Corp. which apart from the Wall Street Journal has many other non-specializedmedia, it is 1.3 times revenues. Specialization andobjectivitypay off. The drifts of bad information Manynewspaper readers andmediavisitors aredis- satisfiedwith hearing only the “for” or the “against” and, if they do not want to be reassured in their basic opinion, they feel frustrated andwill seek their truth inlessreliablesources.Thisiswhatwecommonlycall “fake news”, conspiracy, the drift towards populism and extremes and while we are at it, the betrayal of democratic values in the event ofwar. Freedomof press Thepressisfree,soitisfreetowriteornotwritewhat it wants. This great principlewas recalled during the enormousmarchledafterthe CharlieHebdo attacksby PresidentHollandeonJanuary11,2015inParisinthe companyofnumerousheadsofstateandforeigngov- ernments to reaffirm the absolute nature of the free- domof thepress.Absolute as longas the safetyof the population is not endangered. And what else? Pope Francis declared immediately on January 15, 2015: “Everyonehasnotonlythefreedom,theright,butalso theobligationtosaywhattheythinktohelpthecom- mon good. It is legitimate to use this freedom but without causing offense. One cannot offend orwage war, or kill in the name of one’s own religion, in the name of God! Killing in the name of God is an aber- rationandwemustbelievewithfreedom,withoutof- fending, without imposing, or killing.” President Erdogan in his underwear in CharlieHebdo inOctober 2000, theBelgian Secretary of State for Immigration cari- catured as a Nazi by the young people of the Ecolo party in 2018 and many other things of this kind are insults to the freedom of expression. And autho- rizing the Swedish police to protect on June 28, 2023 an “Iraqi atheistwithChris- tian roots refugee” burning the Koran with two Swedish flags and the Swedish national anthem on loudspeakers in front of a mosque is not only ridiculous butmore than just irresponsible, as the sequence of events on Oc- tober 15 inBrussels showed. But there are other rules of good conduct. The definition of words First of all, the definition of words. What is left, right, far left, far right, ultra-conser- vatism, ultra-liberalism, neoliberalism, libertarian- ism, etc.? AtAgefiLuxembourg, to be apolitical, it is essential to have good definitions. I therefore propose that the right be defined as the policy which increases the share of private compared to public (in % of GDP), the left is the opposite, the extreme left and the extreme right when the cursor approaches of 100% of GDP. Ultra-conservatism and neo-conser- vatismare difficult to understand, even taking into account the Second IraqWar. Neoliberalism, ultra-liberalism or ultra-capitalism aremore interestingwords.ABelgian philosopher wrote that neoliberalism no longer believes in the spontaneous emergence of markets: they must be created artificially... The State, in its bureaucratic form, mustwork toplan the logic of performance... Neoliberalismexplodes therefore in the alliance be- tween intractable bureaucracy andunbridledmar- ket. What he describes is no longer liberalism but crony capitalism. (4) ChatGPT confirms this. It is im- portant to note that neoliberalismas a political con- cept does not necessarily advocate crony capitalism, but it creates an environmentwhere this can happen if regulatory and monitoring mecha- nisms are not sufficiently implemented strong to prevent such abuses. Libertarianism (individual sovereignism, no or very little state intervention) is also very interesting since thereareleft-winglibertarians,egalitarians,andright- wing libertarians, which is easier to understand. Wikipedia listsElonMusk,JeffBezos(butnotthe Wash- ington Post ), Richard Branson, Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich,AynRand,RonPaulofcourse,PeterThiel the founder of PayPal, the Koch brothers, Jimmy Wales the founder ofWikipedia, RupertMurdoch, ... andinFrancePascalSalin,AlainMadelinandperhaps Gaspard Koenig who denies it. It is not sure that ev- eryone agreeswith this list but it is Wikipedia . As for the market, it is shaken between the social market economy, the public market economy and the sustainablemarket economy. Themarket itself is no longer very popular. The word ‘liberal’ is also jolted, since it is the rallying signof theAmerican left (the Democrats) and the ambition of part of the French right. Here are some guidelines fromAgefi Luxembourg toremainapoliticalandnotinduceapoliticalopinion in our editorials and interviewquestions. Themeaning ofwords Many words are distorted: tax optimization quickly becomes tax evasion, a referendum in Karabakh be- comesapseudo-referenduminDonbass(twoentities whoseautonomy/independenceisnotrecognizedby the UN), medias briefly (2016) confuse the burkini and the burka, aMuslim’s veil is a religious habit (in France but not in England or the United States) (2) . Withoutmentioningwar propaganda,which is very present today. Themanipulation of history Onceweagreeonthewords,wemustlookathistory: howmany words covering economic, social, philo- sophicalandreligiousrealitieshavenotevolvedwith- out being distorted in the way that is increasing in American politics since the last American elections, withwhat is now called “wokism”. History is made up of mythologies, beautiful stories and historical facts, beautiful or horrible. What, on the other hand, becomes very abusive is the fabrication of historical errors repeated over and over to the point of appear- ingundeniable. Two examples: - The mass graves of Timisoara in 1989 when the communist president “Ceausescu, suffering from leukemia, reportedly needed to change his blood every month. Young people drained of blood were reportedly discovered in the Carpathian forest. Ceaușescu vampire?Howcanwe believe it? Rumor had announced mass graves. They were found in Timișoara.” ( TF1 ) and “Liberated Timișoara disco- vers a mass grave. Thousands of naked bodies just exhumed,earthyandmutilated,theunbearableprice ofhisinsurrection”(SergeJuly, Libération ).Thenews- paper Le Figaro , in its edition of January 30, 1990, an- nounced that it was a fake, that the dead shown on television had beendug up fromthe city’s “indigent cemetery.” - Belgian King Leopold II’s “genocide” of 10 million Congolese in Congo (1885-1908). This bad fable (3) is still circulating. It has been “cross-referenced” since 1998 (25years). This is neither historynor journalism, it ismediocre plagiarism. Statistics and common sense Finally, the use of statistics without serious verifica- tionbecomesridiculous(notthestatistics,theabsence of verification). An example: Amnesty International writes on its site that 31% of women have suffered physicalviolencefromapartnerornon-partnersince the age of 15. This represents approximately 13 mil- lion women. These are interviews conducted with 42,000 women in the 28 member states of the Euro- pean Union. Amnesty has probably done serious work but 31% is huge. On an individual scale, this wouldmeanthat 1/3ofthewomenwemeethavesuffered physical violence! When statistics give results far from common sense, several pointsmust be checked: -Thestartingpointofacurve:ifyoubuystocksonthe stockmarket on October 24, 1929, you have demon- strated that stocks are the best performing financial instrumentsandifyoubuybondsinNovember1982, youcanarguethatbondsarethemostefficientfinan- cial instruments on themarkets - What are the data on the abscissa (x) and ordinate (y)? Is there azero?Are all segments of the curve rep- resented identically? - Do survey questions lead to biased responses? -Whichorganizationpaid for the surveyandaccom- panyingstatistics?FollowtheMoney.IfanNGOcam- paignsagainsttheharmfuleffectof(increasingly)fine particles in Paris, it is unlikely that Christian Geron- deau’s book, L’air est pur à Paris mais personne ne le sait (The air is pure in Paris but nobody knows it) (2018) will be mentioned. Who is right?Who’s wrong? It is not up to the journalist to respond, he only has the duty to inform. - And finally, correlation is not reason, it is a com- monplace. Themediamarket Theowner(s)ofamediaoutletareindependentofthe editorial staff (or the opposite). Today, they aremore rarely journalists than influential groups, at the head of which must be the State (owner in France for ex- ample, stakeholder in most countries). But owners don’t always seem to have the profitability they de- serve and themarket share theydesire. Figures show that as news sources in Germany between 2013 and 2020, television declined by 13%, print declined by 37%,everythingonlineincreasedby6%includingso- cialmediawhich increasedby 21%. (1) Social networks We all use socialmediawhich is a remarkable inven- tion.Of course, not everything is extraordinary, start- ing with the “fake news”, the incitements to hatred and violence and the spellingmistakes which are le- gion.Ratherthanregulatingthesecommunicationin- struments to thepoint of limitingopinions, shouldn’t we consider them as simple tools like the telephone, for example. There are already enough laws toprosecutepress of- fenses (crimes and misdemeanors committed through the press or by any other means of publica- tion, the law of 1881 in France). Just as the telephone company is not responsible for criminal SMS mes- sages that have escaped its vigilance, social networks shouldnotbeheldresponsibleforthecontent,itbeing understood that in return theywould undertake not to censor political opinions (that are not criminal). I will add that, tomaintain a critical mind, it is good to look at information fromseveral sources of opposing trends, without forgetting social networks. InhisprefacetoBalzac’sbook, Lesjournalistes ,amono- graph of the Parisian press, Gérard deNerval makes funof the“ canard ”, this « nouvelle quelquefois vraie, tou- jours exagérée, souvent fausse » (news sometimes true, always exaggerated, often false).Wewere in 1849. (5) French version on page 4 (1)ReutersInstituteDigitalNewsReport2020 (2)AdelinRemy (expresses himself personally), “Le débat sur le portduvoile,çasuffit !”, Contrepoints ,20mai2022 (3)In1998,AdamHochschild,ajournalistwithaBerkeleydegree, published a book about King Leopold II who ruled the Congo beforegivingittoBelgium.HeestimatesthedecreaseintheCon- golesepopulationfrom1885to1908,underLeopoldII,at32mil- lion (1st version) then at 19 million (1st translation into French after correction of a calculation error) then finally at 10 million. Decrease due, according to him, to forced labor in rubber and to diseases imported by whites. Joseph Ki-Zerbo, the best African historian who cannot be suspected of sympathy for colonial regimes, writes that therewere 43,500 Congoleseworkers in the rubberindustryin1903,oneoftheyearsofpeakproduction.Itis impossible to compare these 43,500 workers with the totally ex- travagantfigureof10million,or435,000deathsperyearor1,200 deaths per day, for a population of maximum 1,500 Europeans in1906.Thefigureof10millionisstillincirculation.Thereiseven a book in the United States: MatthewWhite, Atrocities, The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History , W.W. Norton & Company, NewYork 2012where Leopold II is number 14 (out of 100) after Stalin,GenghisKhan(andbeforeHitler!).ItssourceisHochschild. (4)Jean-SébastienPhilippart,Opinion,LaLibreBelgique24avril 2020 : le néolibéralisme ne croit plus en l’émergence spontanée desmar- chés : ceux-ci doivent être créés artificiellement…L’État, sous sa forme bureaucratique,doits’employeràplanifierlalogiquedurendement…Le néolibéralismeéclatedoncdansl’allianceentrebureaucratieintraitableet marchédébridé. (5) Quoted by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Histoire intime de la Ve Ré- publique,LaBelleEpoque ,Gallimard2022 Agefi Luxembourg, apolitical?