For at least eight weeks, French consumption will have fallen to a historically low level. A situation, for those who suffer less from the direct impact of the crisis, synonymous with income. According to calculations by the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE), 55 billion euros will be saved by households after two months or almost of confinement. The figures for March confirm this: the use of the livret A has skyrocketed.
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In order for activity to resume, OFCE experts then highlight the essential recovery in consumption, in particular through this savings. In harmony with the words of Bercy and its tenant Bruno Le Maire, who worried about this imposing use of savings, saying he preferred investment to it. Only, the double uncertainty as to the risks posed by the virus and in the face of the very threatening shadow of a major economic crisis, will prevent, according to many economists, the immediate and massive recovery of consumption.
It is for this reason that many are looking for an emergency door. Some advocate lowering the VAT, Socialist deputies request an exceptional and joint deduction on outstanding life insurance more than 30,000 euros. Éric Woerth, deputy Les Républicains and chairman of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, for his part, is appealing, in the columns of the Update on the birth of the little brother of booklet A: " booklet C ", for coronavirus.
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As Éric Woerth's entourage explains in Le Figaro , the deputy wishes by this measure to mobilize savings which " will not be entirely consumed during the gradual deconfinement ". This " booklet C " would help, according to the proposal of the former Minister of the Budget, to finance investment and accelerate the recovery.
It would therefore be built on the model of its big brother, the Livret A, which, up to 250 billion euros, helps to finance social housing or the energy transition. Éric Woerth believes that this measure makes it possible “ to involve the French in the recovery effort under known and reassuring conditions ”. Those around him add that this savings will obtain, like the Livret A, the protection of the State, which " guarantees to the French the sums deposited and the remuneration " and would be done at the rate ... of the Livret A, currently at 0.5% . On the other hand, Éric Woerth recommends very long-term financing for the Livret C to ensure a "solid" recovery.
A risk for the State?
A proposition that Philippe Crevel, director of the Cercle de l'Épargne, does not support. He believes that this is "a statization of the mode of financing the economy, which it took 40 years to re-liberalize, and which would make us go back by a system of public investment ".
In other words, he does not believe in such a measure which, according to him, “ means that we would transform money in the short term into the long term to make the risk borne by the State and the Caisse des Dépôts. In fact, the Livret A, like regulated savings in general, is transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts at low interest rates, whose shareholder is the State, to then finance programs of general interest.
" Is there a funding problem for the state and businesses, I would say no, because the European Central Bank provides a large part of it, " continues the economist. For the moment, he does not anticipate a " failure of the French banking system which would justify that there is a new element of savings. " I prefer funding by the markets than state funding, " he adds, before ironically: "up close, we can invent the booklet D ".