In these times of investment needs, in order to respond to energy, environmental, economic, and budgetary transitions, public opinion is tempted to seek answers (culprits?) among the so-called “wealthy” members of society and “big business.” Nothing new in itself, except for the inclusion of savings in this never-ending quest for new scapegoats.   The age-old debate that divides economists is back in the news, with the question of whether savings (described in France as excessive) – but immutable as a republican virtue – could become a  brake on investment, growth, employment and, ultimately, demand itself. This new publication from the REF, which draws on a host of prestigious economists, is timely. In three richly documented chapters, the authors contribute factual elements, context, and a long-term strategic vision to the debate. The first chapter provides an overview of savings trends in France compared with Europe, while the second chapter examines the heterogeneity of savings behavior in several dimensions (in relation to the holding of risky assets, household characteristics, product life cycles, and the role of public policy). Finally, the third part sheds light on the important issue of mobilizing private savings to benefit the French and European economies. It should be noted that in France, although individuals save a lot (15% of their income on average, which is higher than in most OECD countries), they do so rather poorly, favoring liquid and less risky assets. Low stock ownership and the increase in foreign stock holdings have negative consequences in terms of sovereignty and competitiveness for our country. The need for regulations that place less emphasis on “safe and liquid” assets is being called for by all financial players and insurers, banks, and asset managers. The authors argue for accelerating the implementation of a genuine “Savings and Investment Union,” identifying four priority areas: redesigning market infrastructure to reduce costs, unifying capital market supervision for better risk sharing,    reviving securitization, financing the green transition, and promoting the European venture capital industry that finances innovative companies. As this remarkable publication shows, the new path that seems to be opening up for savings is full of great promises… no doubt still accompanied for a long time to come by the popular saying: “If you don’t save a penny, you’ll never have two.” Marie-Laure BARUT-ETHERINGTON is a Deputy GM at the Banque de France. Pierre BOLLON is Director of European Affairs at the EIF. Jean-louis CHAMBON 

The book is interesting in more ways than one: educational, practical, inspiring. You can’t do sustainable finance without doing finance first! This book introduces the main concepts of corporate and market finance, then explains how these concepts are relevant to sustainable finance. Each chapter focuses on a financial concept: wealth, interest rates, returns, balance sheets, asset portfolios, arbitrage, derivatives, and even crypto-assets! This book thus provides a bridge between “traditional” finance and sustainable finance. That covers the educational aspect. It is practical thanks to its original format. In each chapter, the concepts are explained by teachers and practitioners: CFOs, central bankers, commercial bankers, investment bankers, managers, trading room managers, appraisers, accountants, auditors, business leaders, and more. We learn that concepts such as IRR, required rate of return, risk-free rate, company buyouts, arbitrage, CAPM, options and derivatives, and extra-financial valuation are applicable to the models and functioning of sustainable finance. The book is inspiring because it is not a pro domo plea for sustainable finance. On the contrary, the choice of interviewees leads us to question the current systemic limitations: difficulties in determining the rate of return on an ESG project and calculating environmental value, the intrinsic value of carbon, questions about regulations and SRI evaluators, etc. Each chapter includes a conclusion in a few points that summarizes the previous discussion and raises questions, an inspiring format! Natural and social capital cannot be reduced to numbers, but numbers are essential and it is crucial to collect reliable data. And “classic” financial concepts provide a solid foundation that can be adapted to the analysis of broader issues, particularly sustainability. The author rightly asserts that the green and sustainable transition will require a return of trust, governance, and value, and the current difficulties are not overlooked. Regarding trust, E. DOLLEY affirms the need to develop blockchains. Given their energy consumption, this point seems counterintuitive, but the arguments put forward are strong. The traceability of funds invested in projects, the reliability of upstream data that is so difficult to obtain that the OMNIBUS Directive has limited the obligations to obtain it, and “certified” renewable energy sources would justify and satisfy the information needs of economic agents. This book does not develop ready-made solutions, but it provides a kind of serious and accessible compendium. Thus, the transition would be driven by a “bottom-up” approach, as the top-down approach has, according to the author, reached its well-defined limits. Dominique Chesneau

The reader will not find in this booklet “the means to earn more by working less”, but he will know how to rebuild a society based on work, allowing both to live better and to acquire a patrimony. The author notes that labor productivity has declined since the 1980s, due to the country’s deindustrialization and the weakening of skills due to educational downgrading. He recalls that France was downgraded from the 6th to the 27th place in the world ranking of GDP per capita. He notes that the purchasing power of the French is no longer progressing and that two-thirds of their wealth comes from inheritances. The French who do not work live better than those who do. Work only supports purchasing power through social assistance in all forms. The progressivity of taxes and contributions financing these aids also discourages employees from working overtime and employers from recruiting and/or increasing the wages of their employees. Workers retain, on average, only half of their gross earnings, while rentiers receive one third, pensioners one sixth, and heirs less than one tenth. This results in different forms of resistance to work, which mobilize more protesters than other social conflicts, encourage sick leave, “silent resignations” and/or rejections of “bullshit jobs”. In 2025, the working population must also support twice as many retirees as in 1980. According to the author, this phenomenon is due to an unequal distribution of the value created by labor, which favors both financial and real estate capital. The French no longer believe in the “collective discourse” that orders them to get back to work. The author therefore strives to propose a new “social contract” aimed at bridging the gap between the living standards of workers, rentiers, retirees, and heirs. He proposes measures to enhance the value of work and the purchasing power of assets through better remuneration, thanks to more professional training, a revival of innovation (especially through AI), a reindustrialization of the country associated with a limitation of imports of dumped products, a more flexible employment and greater professional mobility. He advocates a “revenge of employees on customers”, by redistributing VAT rates in favor of basic necessities. He advises building a “new ideal of work”, based on the values ​​of responsibility, respect, and empathy. The author engages in a rigorous and educational exercise of analyzing the French evil of professional attrition and formulates coherent proposals to deal with it. Antoine Foucher was director of the cabinet of a minister of labor. He currently heads the consulting firm Quintet.Jean-Jacques Pluchart

The Cercle des Economistes signs its latest work under a title borrowed from the populist press, its attempts to answer the main economic and social questions that the French are asking to each other’s in these troubled times. The book brings together the best specialists in the fields covered: the fragmentation of the world economy; the questions of debt and the French employment rate; labor immigration; public money financing culture. In each chapter, the authors emphasize the importance of the questions asked, analyze – or rather criticize – the answers generally given to these questions by political circles and the media, and then, drawing on the best sources, engage in useful “reasoned returns to facts” and “deconstructions of myths”, to finally formulate concrete proposals to revamp the fundamentals of the country. The reader of the book will note that in economic and social matters, elected officials and the media too often engage in abusive simplifications, the propagation of counter-truths and clever simulations, in order to defend ideologies and justify programs with improbable effects. The reader will find that the unemployment rates of “the young and the old” are abnormally higher than those of other Western countries, and that more than 600,000 French seniors are virtually without resources. The reader will also learn that the actual working hours of French workers of working age is close to the European average, that the expulsion of “working immigrants” would ruin the construction, catering, and domestic services sectors. They will be surprised to learn that the responsibility for France’s public over-indebtedness is more attributable to right-wing policies (favorable to tax cuts) than to the left (oriented towards corporate taxation). They will learn that economic growth can be combined with a search for happiness without indulging in laziness, and that the promotion of culture involves both public and private fundings. After reading the book, the reader will remain skeptical about the chances of sorting out the country’s fundamentals in the short or medium terms. The 16 authors are teacher-researchers and leaders of institutions, members of the Cercle des Economistes.J-J. Pluchart

What if power no longer belonged to the great nations? Nicolas Tenzer is certain: the days of the traditional great powers are numbered. Trump’s United States has broken the Atlantic Alliance; China, which remains a predatory power, is bogged down in its internal contradictions; Russia is facing a “no future” scenario. There is now a persistent belief in many diplomatic circles that international politics is essentially determined by the major powers and their games. Other countries are certainly not unimportant in this conventional view, and their policies may sometimes be disruptive, but they never have the final say! However, the return to “American greatness,” which must be based on a rapprochement with China, heralds America’s decline. The major countries that are members of the Security Council have cherished the idea of a closed club of five all the more because it projected an image as flattering as precarious makeup! However, playing on permanent ambiguity gives the illusion of power in the absence of confidence, but hides a lack of will. At the same time, some describe Russia as a paper tiger, and it is not clear that the prediction of China becoming the world’s leading economic, technological, and military power by 2049 will come true! The possible or even emerging multipolarity of the world would lead to the emergence of revisionist states. The radical fragmentation of the poles could also bring about freedom. More agile players ARE likely to reinvent the rules of the international game: Estonia, a pioneer in warning about Europe’s security, Turkey if it manages to choose sides, Syria freed from its criminal occupations, but also the medium-sized powers of Central and Eastern Asia. Together, the democracies of the North, South, and East will join forces against the revisionist powers. Together, they will be able to stand up to the pseudo-empires. France and the United Kingdom will have to play a leading role in this realignment. As for Ukraine, its heroic resistance demonstrates the ability of medium-sized states to stand up to the old powers. Through an analysis of the new balance of power, Nicolas Tenzer reveals how these “intermediate” states are redrawing the map of the world: they are creating unprecedented alliances, developing original strategies of influence, and proving that it is possible to exert greater influence on the international stage without being a superpower. Tomorrow, world security and the freedom of peoples will depend on the determination of small and medium-sized nations. The Trump episode may have been the moment when this realization dawned. The author reviews the power limitations of post-colonial states, China, the United States, India, African disorganization, and the lack of strategy in Middle Eastern countries. At the same time, resistance among peoples is emerging, along with a so-called “Ukrainian” model for the nation of the future. So: G-Zero or G-Infinity? How can stability be built? The signal sent by a Ukrainian victory will undoubtedly be decisive, both symbolically and in practice, and could inspire others to follow suit. This victory is therefore existential for Europe and other medium-sized powers! The strength of an armed people is underestimated until its next victories. While in the old world it was customary to consider that the great powers formed an axis of security, “tomorrow’s security and freedom will come through small and medium-sized states.” The book is supported by highly relevant observations thanks to the author’s geopolitical erudition. Like any projection, the book’s conclusions will not necessarily prove true, but they may. This book is necessary to help us escape the media chaos and take a step back. Readers will gain information and reasoning that will allow them to refine their own views. Whether you agree with the thesis or not, it must be known. In the dark environment of a world at war, this book is a tunnel at the end of which there is a legitimate element of optimism. Dominique CHESNEAU

Crypto Assets and Non-Crypto Currencies. From the outset, the two authors, experts on the technical, economic, and geopolitical aspects of payment methods, warn us against fundamental errors in the assessment of so-called “crypto currencies”, such as the bitcoin. They do not fulfill the attributes of a currency, which are to be a unit of account, a means of intermediation of exchanges, and finally a reserve of value; the authors prefer to speak of crypto-assets which, in the absence of effective regulatory bodies, present considerable risks, essentially linked to an uncontrolled volatility without concrete counterparts and do not constitute, in any way, a reserve of value. A large part of the book is devoted to the risks generated by the uncontrolled expansion of crypto assets. For example, the anonymity of asset ownership and the impossibility of tracing the underlying transactions, the extreme volatility of the prices of these assets, the meteoric expansion of illicit transactions related to money laundering or arms trafficking on the dark web. Overall, in the absence of a framework by central banks, the flow of crypto-assets poses a threat to the monetary and financial order. The book then develops the opportunities offered by the underlying technologies around the blockchain. This technology, properly used, that is to say, exploited in an appropriate regulatory framework, can serve as a platform for the decentralization of part of the financial activities, for example for certain specialized and duly regulated credits and secured payment operations. The major issue is the sovereignty of Central Banks, which may be dispossessed of their role in regulating official currencies. In this respect, the book is a driving force for a controlled use of crypto assets which must not, under any circumstances, become an official currency. Denis Molho

The author engages in a critical analysis of the French social protection system, based on the welfare state model inherited from Beveridge’s “3 U”. He draws up a genealogy of the notions – both familiar and unknown – of social protection, social security, social state, welfare state, national solidarity, universal minimum income, “inactivity trap” … He analyzes the drifts of the system’s financing and taxation methods, which he compares to the mechanisms implemented in other major democracies. He recalls the successive alarms launched, since the 1970s, by politicians, such as Georges Pompidou and Jacques Chaban Delmas, by historians, such as Pierre Rosanvallon, or by jurists, such as Pierre Laroque. He observes the many attempts – sometimes utopian and often in vain – to “redefine solidarity”, “rethink rights”, “restore duties”, “improve redistribution”, “recover the untraceable budget balance” … He shows the complexity of legal constructions, fiscal adjustments, financial arrangements … to “fill the hole of the Secu”. He reveals that these excesses are both accelerated and inevitable, due to the political instability of the country and the “French taboo of capitalization”. He ironizes the typically French sense of the ideological controversy around the notions of social charges and contributions, insurance and levies, pensions and retirement… He welcomes the zeal of the technocrats who ensure the governance of the State-funded parity, in the absence of structural reforms.The author recommends, following Erell Thevenon, to adopt a model of “State-Providence” located between the “universal and the individual”. The State refocuses on its “core mission” on a “solidarity base”. Private actors are guaranteed by contract against health and occupational risks, depending on their personal life choices. In any case, it seems that the rebalancing of the French system requires “more work” and “less aid”, as well as a reduction of “real inequalities” but also “undue advantages”.Felix Torres (ENS, associate Professor of history, doctor of anthropology) is the author of numerous books on institutions and companies, where he demonstrates a vast economic and social culture and a rare mastery of historical and anthropological approaches. Jean-Jacques Pluchart

The author offers his vision on the genesis, influence, and evolution of this current of thought in the political and economic sphere of a part of the world, in particular Europe. If environmental awareness has always been correlated to mankind in various forms, it experienced a boom with the beginning of industrialization and the emergence of the first theses on the need to regulate the world population. The Environment becomes, over the course of events, the matrix of more identity-based and more radical currents. This is how, at the end of the 19th century, the word “ecology” was born, to designate the “scientific discipline which studies the natural environments as well as the relations and interactions between the living beings and these environments”. Very quickly, “ecology” deviates from this definition and their representatives, ecologists, to become a messianic movement based on a quasi-religious rhetoric. The new “ecology” is based on the concept of “imminent global systemic crisis”, fueling its rationality and justification on materials provided by the news: acid rain, nuclear risks, overpopulation, the ozone layer, greenhouse gas emissions related to human activities, energy transition… Each theme is the subject of active advertising via broadcasting and popularization relays: NGOs, Conferences/Debates, ad-hoc Commissions, media, experts of all kinds, reports/theses. Funding is legion through international organizations, governments, contributions, bequests/donations… It is worth noting the remarkable plasticity of the approach: Each new theme drives out the previous one, as was the case with acid rain, overpopulation, the ozone layer, nuclear power… Global warming is the new battlefield for environmentalists, fueled by a number of reports, including those of the IPCC. The European Union is among the good students on its territory but is less concerned about the possible environmental damage of its international suppliers, the global impact study being mainly reserved for its own nationals. This virtuous approach of the European Union is not, for the moment, imitated by its direct competitors (United States, China, India, Brazil…) less hampered by the norms and beneficiaries of our environmental challenges which translates, for the European Union, into an impoverishment, a “soft” decline, a deindustrialization, a loss of sovereignty, and an over-indebtedness for some. Can this asymmetric competitiveness gap, to some extent, explain the decline of Europe and its erasure in this new world? The author’s final optimism is based on an awareness of the European Union’s economic, social, and political issues, but also on the gradual disappearance of ecology as a dominant thought by its inability to anticipate and solve problems. Bertrand ALLIOT, actor of the environmental movement. Former ecologist and columnist. Published “Une histoire naturelle de l’homme” (A Natural History of Man). Ed. de l’Artilleur in 2020. Hubert Alcaraz