Neither good nor bad.
In ten years, the political perception of the public debt has changed profoundly.
It is now globally regarded as a financial instrument which, when used with skill, can create wealth.
Low interest rates and recent overly drastic austerity plans imposed on southern Europe have dismissed Nietzsche's ranting about the religious origins of the term
schuld
, both "fault" and "debt" in German.
Read also:
Deficit, debt: will the European totem of budgetary austerity be brought down by the crisis?
However, public debt has long haunted economists.
In the 18th century, Adam Smith announced the ruin of the great European nations under this weight. More recently, in 2005, the Minister of the Economy, Thierry Breton, presenting the famous Pébereau report on the debt, declared that it is "
possible for the France to return to normal debt
”.
French debt then stood at 67% of gross domestic product (GDP) when the standard at the time, set by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, targeted 60%.
European coordination
A new convention,
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