A traditional 401(k) or IRA does not erase the tax on deductible contributions; it defers it from working years to retirement, in exchange for locking the balance until age 59.5. Its net value turns on three regime variables the sales…
The savings held on Livret A accounts do not sit idle. A regulation-set share is centralised at the Caisse des Dépôts, which turns it into very-long-term loans to build and renovate social housing. This circuit is why the Livret A…
France’s Livret d’épargne populaire is often described as “the Livret A, only better”. The description misleads: the LEP is not a better account open to everyone, but a means-tested anti-inflation transfer, reserved for households below an income threshold and funded…
France’s Livret A ceiling, €22,950, is one of the best-known figures in French saving and one of the most misread. It applies to cumulative deposits, not to the balance, and a “full” account can sit above that figure without any…
“Does cash protect against inflation?” The question expects a yes or a no. The series since 1960 answers differently: the real return depends on the macro regime. The same instrument protects in one configuration and erodes in another. “Does cash…
Each time the Livret A rate is reset, the argument is about the nominal figure. Across sixty-six years, that figure says almost nothing. The only quantity that matters over time, the real return, tells a far more uneven story than…
France’s Livret A rate follows a published formula: a half-yearly average of inflation excluding tobacco and a money-market rate, the €STR, rounded, with a floor. But that formula is only a proposal, and the government has departed from it repeatedly…
France’s Livret A pays a rate that is not a market price but the outcome of a political trade-off between rewarding household savings and containing the cost of financing social housing. Over the long run, that rate measures the financial…
The euro’s level acts on the area’s economy through two opposing channels: it changes the price of imports, hence imported inflation, and it changes the competitiveness of exports. A weak euro and a strong euro each carry a benefit and…
EUR/USD is the price of one euro expressed in dollars: when it reads 1.14, one euro trades for 1.14 dollars. It is a currency pair, meaning a ratio between two currencies, and it is this relative nature that governs how…
