Germany Set to Steal the Future Sunshine of France.

Just as Britain has been exploited for its future wind, so too now is France about to be pillaged of its sunshine and vast swathes of its arable land laid to glass.

Were the French to dedicate their land to solar panels instead of livestock or crops none could complain, but as in the case of Britain's onshore and offshore wind resources - German minds and deviousness seem busily at work behind the costly and ridiculous plans.

The European Commission yesterday approved the imposition of emergency import duties on Chinese solar panels, most likely the opening shot in what may turn out to be a vicious and protracted trade war. Read one report of that decision from here. There can be only one cause for the imposition of such import duties, that being cost! Quite simply they are cheaper! The buyers of the panels are being taxed, which cost will be passed to electricity users in the years ahead, just as is the case with British wind farms!

Why should French electricity consumers be forced to buy higher than market priced panels from Germany, sacrifice arable land for generations ahead and commit to pay higher than necessary electricity charges for the foreseeable future? All of this happening right now, just as Chines import tariffs are imposed, one example is this week being discussed in a neighbouring commune to mine, Ronsenac in the Charente, (my own commune already has its own, smaller such facility) to spread in their case over an area of 70 hectares, that being 172.9 acres?

There is one answer to those questions and one answer only - the EU!

But stating that, clouds what the EU has today become, a means of extending German control over the European land mass, not on this occasion for territorial gain as so often in the past, but for absolute economic control already seen clearly across the UK in the actual ownership of vast assets, also of course through the austerity programmes in Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and Italy but now too, as this example shows, just now getting underway in France. Greed for money and control from Germany now seem to have become the principle, (almost sole,) driving forces of the European Union, and nothing, not even the risk of a trade war with China, seems capable of stopping it.

Only by ending this EU Project can the nations of Europe resume their role of protecting their citizens though tried and tested means of national sovereignty and democracy. If their national governments remain unprepared to act in their protection, where now may the citizens of Europe look for redress from the constant ripping off through hidden taxes and straightforward economic extortion daily obviously underway?

What are Britain, France and Italy to do about Germany?

Under the guise of a review of two books on Germany, the Charlemagne column in tomorrow's Economist Magazine raises the reality of German power in today's EU. Read here.

On the week of the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, this seems most appropriate. Norman Tebbit, one of her closest ministerial colleagues, finely tuned in to her beliefs, in his comment last weekend for the Mail, blamed those in her Party who had her removed as working for Brussels, many suspect that is in fact merely code for German influence and objectives.

The 26 other countries of the EU will eventually have to decide their own attitudes to German control of their former nations, many European citizens whose forebears fought and emigrated to avoid such a fate, are likely to be unhappy at that prospect.

The leaders of the larger non-German EU ex-nations have a formidable problem to face, Italy actually physically lacks a leader as well as the character attributes one associates with such a position, as seems to be the case for both Britain and France. Nevertheless something has to be faced, we cannot go on much longer with children being allowed to starve in Greece, as was reported in the New York Times yesterday!

Are we Now Governed by Criminals?

The Daily Mail reports that 200 British servicemen are to be sent to Mali for training purposes, read here, more significantly such seems confirmed by the German State News organisation Deutsche Welle, here.

Mali is in a state of war and has called for assistance from France. Will British troops be under French command in Mali. Mali is not even a country within the British Commonwealth, so what is the legal position of our troops when in that country and who will be responsible in the event of casualties. Will Britain then be at war with the Islamists who have invaded the country?

What is the Treaty governing our co-operation with French forces on the ground in Mali, is it a hybrid of the St Malo Agreement between Britain and France? If so which Prime Minister has been criminally negligent in putting us into this state of illegality Blair, Cameron, or Brown in-between, or is it, as I suspect - all three?

Why is Parliament not being consulted and why from the morning media is no MP raising such questions?

Governance requires laws which the governed are expected to obey following the example set by their rulers! Under what laws and with what legality are the Coalition Government now operating with regard to deployment of our forces to Mali?

The EU has so eroded sovereignty and the meaning and integrity of nation states, that we are not only on the verge of economic bankruptcy but bankrupt of the most fundamental concepts of legal government! Our rulers act like anarchists!

Europe's fissure along the Rhine is re-appearing

The Charlemagne columnist in The Economist this morning takes up my theme of the failing Elysée Treaty, linked here, although of course, not yet my call for its early demise, although the article comes surprisingly close by quoting General de Gaulle, its French signatory as once saying "treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last." 

I watched a military train pass through Angoulême station on Wednesday of this week, with huge guns, armoured vehicles and tanks, all no doubt headed towards Africa, and it brought home to me that France is once again at war. A point hammered home from a link on Twitter leading here; bringing sharply home the reality of France's nuclear dependency.

Such nuclear electricity independence sets France apart from Germany which looks East to Russia for energy security with presumably fond glances towards Poland's coal resources. Britain on the other hand is concerned with the oil exports from the neighbouring giant country of Nigeria in assessing its reaction to events in Algeria, Mali and Niger.

Plus ça change, plus la même chose. I guess!

US takes two months, France six or so

There will be no New Start this New Year for the self-oppressed democracies of the West. Everywhere the utter filth the electorates have self-centredly opted to retain in power will spend more billions or trillions, mostly to retain themselves in office for a few more months, while daily lying to preserve the pretence that their policies can eventually achieve a return to sanity.

The reductions in Government spending cuts in the US will become a problem again in just two months, while in France the complete charade that the higher percentage marginal tax rate will deliver the same percentage revenues increase to achieve a 2013 deficit target of 3% will be run through the National Assembly for a second time.

Hopefully a few more John Galts will walk off and out of our sight, to somehow keep alive the prospect that eventually humanity will return to reality and opt for the individuality, creativity and hope that lies within us all. Even in the abomination of what, to Britain's forty year shame, has become the present European Union.

France's Tax Threats Against Belgium Signal Extreme Danger

The quite extraordinarily aggressive attitude of the President of France and his delegation against his neighbouring country of Belgium was the only truly significant factor of substance to emerge from this week's European Council meeting.

Belgium has been on the verge of falling apart for two years and survives mostly because it hosts the evil EU. The French speaking portion of the country Wallonia is therefore already looking towards France with considerably more interest than that of mere close neighbour.

One report on the substance and nature of the threats is best gleaned from this report that appeared yesterday in Zero Hedge, linked here.

The present attitude of the French Government is reminiscent of that of Cardinal Richelieu towards La Rochelle during the siege of 1627. La Rochelle was rich from trade with the new world, Richelieu fortified Brouage down the coast to contain the wealth he later expected to accrue, but when the siege was done with some 75% of its inhabitants slaughtered, the wealth and trade had disappeared with it. Arguably France struggled to ever recover from that folly of jealous greed disguised as a religious theological difference.

The village in Belgium, complete with socialist mayor (apparently an almost equal affront in President Hollande's eye) is home to other wealthy families from France, including the owners of the Auchan Hypermarket chain whose aisles across France seem brim full this Christmas season compared to those of some of their struggling competitors when noted by this infrquent shopper.

This blog has constantly warned that fragmentation of the old nation states could be the most dangerous means of the EU's inevitable demise. In this age of austerity I had never imagined that tax equalization could prove the spark in the tinder box for such disputes.

Belgium is in a poor situation to offer resistance against this French assault, were I a rich film star or owner of a prospering supermarket chain, I believe I would now be seeking another, home beyond the EU itself.

Have German attitudes in Alabama also sped the EU's downfall?

In February last year I raised some questions about German attitudes towards the outside world and questioned whether they would lead us all to disaster, that post may be read from here.

The ThyssenKrupp US steel plant mentioned in my comment as well as another in Brazil is now reportedly in deep financial difficulties as commented upon by Der Spiegel yesterday, read here, from which comes this telling extract:

 But now Claassen's questionable trips with journalists are the least of ThyssenKrupp's problems. It faces charges that billions in losses and bad planning were covered up for years, and that supervisory board members deliberately gave out false information. In fact, the very survival of the steelmaker, which has been around for more than a century, may be at stake.

In my 2011 posting the EU was in the opening stages of the financial collapse that is now quite clearly engulfing the supposedly peacefully inclined  and well-intentioned trading organisation, but the danger signs in German attitudes to the problems of the peripheral countries already appeared extremely ominous.

I had commented on theses dangers years before, of course, on Ironies and again during 2005, linked here, where this warning had been repeated:

 As was later pointed out on Ironies this compromise did little to overcome the fact that as the EU's most populace member state the voter in Germany has far more power to determine the future course of the EU than any others - this remained particularly true given the power of the Franco/German axis operating under the terms of the Treaty of Paris.

In light of the rapid descent of France into rudderless chaos under the hapless and daily more clueless President Hollande, even that necessity to coordinate decisions with the French has now disappeared. With Italy under the control of an EU puppet interim or resigned PM and its politicians intent upon entering a two month election campaign, Europe appears left with only the vapid and clueless David Cameron to pull it back from the abyss towards which it seems intent upon careering.

In true tradition to all his earlier decisions, the British Prime Minister has decided that this is the moment to force churches up and down the land to perform gay marriage ceremonies with arbitrary exceptions designed apparently to foster further widespread dissent. No doubt the UK media will need no second prompting to concentrate entirely on that matter over the extended Xmas holiday period, disregarding the growing EU chaos on their doorstep, of which, unhappily, Britain is very much a part!

Can nobody with the authority to act see Europe's destination and gather the leaderless European Council together this week to NOW call a halt?

20 years today since France and the EU Commission condemned Europe to continuing crisis.

Twenty years ago today the French electorate split almost exactly down the middle on whether they would approve European monetary union without much European Community poltical union along the lines as set out by the Maastricht Treaty. The so-called "petitoui"

The leaders of France, backed by the Commission of Jacques Delors in Brussels, faced with this split chose to believe it legitimized their subsequent decisions to continue with EMU, their successors in the EU, wider Europe and the western world are now reaping the dire economic consequences.

The political heirs  to their  power-driven decision remain in power to this day, still denying the impossibility that monetary union requires political union which the people of Europe do not want and will ever reject. The immediate successors and original plotters are as follows - for German Chancellor Kohl - Chancellor Merkel, for President Mitterand - President François Hollande and for then Commission President Jacques Delors his daughter, Martine Aubry, who fittingly leads the French Socialist Party since 2008.

These mainly French plotters were aided by Dominique Strauss Kahn, then Industry Secretary who secured extra votes in the French overseas territories. He had already then given up on the concept of a nation state, as quoted on page 41 of one of the links given earlier this week, repeated here.

DSK would today have almost certainly been President of France today, had he had the intellect and self-will to curb his baser instincts as is now well known worldwide. Damage enough has already been done by DSK, however from his earlier having run the IMF, designed to aid only its nation state membership, but re-directed by DSK in a futile attempt to rescue the Euro currency, the obscene end result of these decades of deceit. That task at the IMF today continues under the direction of Mme Christine Lagarde.

Other national leaders were of course involved in what followed. The role of Britain is particulalrly shameful with useful idiots PM John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, both being hindered by dullness of thought, the latter no doubt partly ascribable to his Eton background. Francis Maude who signed the Treaty survives in Downing Street to this day as I pointed out yesterday.

The French vote followed a similar split in Denmark where the vote had come down against the Treaty. Another vote in Ireland the previous June had given a 69% vote in favour but there were serious doubts over unequal funding for the 'Yes' side, contingent EU funding and other factors also tending to cloud any judgements that may be formed formed from the result. (These questions can be seen from earlier links from this blog this week and various questions and debates in the Dail, such as this). Denmark, of course, in what has now become standard procedure, was required to vote again on a slightly modified version of the same democracy destroying document of oppression.

More facts will be revealed as the years pass and other factors that caused these men to act in the venal way they then chose, leading so far to two decades of constant further lies deceptions and distortions. One thought I may be able to add that later commentators might miss is the co-incidence of birth places between Jean Monnet (a father to the EU) in Cognac and François Mitterand just up the Charente River in Jarnac sometime later; the implications from the strange organisation and arrangements of the Cognac Brandy industry (largely due to an earlier member of the Monnet clan), the history of tax exemptions and royal privileges extanding back to François I, also of Cognac, all seem to have echoes in the peculiar and downright rotten and corrupt running of what has become (and we trust will soon cease to be) the European Union.

Dangers of outvoting the BuBa by the ECB Board

The structure and members of the Governing Council of the ECB is linked here. (A paper on the problems likely to be caused from the Eastern Enlargement of the EU is interesting in that it also discusses present problems, pdf file is here). In theory German interests, as recently explained by the Bundesbank (BuBa) could be outvoted

Public statements by Mario Monti, Eurocrat and EU appointed PM of Italy, lead me to believe that a trap is being set to force Germany to meet the bill for the past profligacy of the Southern Euro Group member states and France. I see that as extremely dangerous.

Under the war guilt clause of the Treaty of Versaille of 1919, included at the insistence of France, these Reparations were set in gold and totalled 50% of all the gold ever mined through history. The effect on the German economy was disastrous.

IMO Germany, soon to be the last triple A credit rated country within the Euro Group, (Finland will remain AAA but purely as a result of its refusal to join in further bailouts except with matching collateral) EVEN IF IT INITIALLY AGREES to abide by and honour such an ECB vote, will not for long be prepared so to do, as the burden upon its own citizens will quickly, once again, become intolerable. 

The most recent market view is here.

After China's grid grab still some juicy bits of Portugal left! French trade & elections.

Reuters has some encouraging news for those wishing to pick over the bones of the next EU victim - Portugal, read here.  Meantime a future prime pick for distressed selling of assets could be identifiied from the same source, as Reuters reported on the disastrous French trade gap for 2011, read here. The latter article has the following telling quotes:

...Farm produce and luxury goods such as handbags and perfume were the exceptions, France's customs office said on Tuesday, in a dismal year for exports that contrasted sharply with bumper returns in neighbouring Germany.
It said there was a deficit of 69.6 billion euros, at the lower end of government forecasts but still 35 percent higher than in 2010.
In Germany, the main engine of European growth and a global exporting superpower, data due on Wednesday is expected to show a trade surplus of around 156 billion in 2011.
The imbalance has become an issue in France's presidential campaign, with President Nicolas Sarkozy blaming a relatively higher cost of labour.

One cannot but help wondering how merging with Germany is going to help this situation, nor why President Sarkozy considers the German Chancellor as a campaigning asset, as she appeared on TV in that role yesterday evening, by his side.

Britain and France today share a BIG 30 Billion Euro question

The recent spat between Britain and France as to which economy is the most ghastly, today gets some sensible analysis from David Marsh on Market Watch, linked here.

Serious business must resume today in the two countries respective treasuries as both nations must decide whether they must each throw some €30 billion extra down the drain, in the form of a bilateral loan to the IMF, in another vain attempt to save the doomed single euro currency. A radio report from the BBC on this will be linked here shortly. (Update: BBC is not providing a link to its 0724 GMT broadcast, Irish Times coverage on the teleconference call is here)

The IMF has historically never failed to recover funds loaned by itself to countries in trouble. The IMF, however, has never before tried to prop up a currency that cannot be devalued and does not constitute the currency of a fully sovereign state. That is the reason both Britain and France would be correct to refuse the advance of these extra amounts in the form of bilateral loans, disconnected form normal IMF funding requirements and restrictions.

Read other comment from here.

Treason (continued) France gloats.

Giant French and German companies, usually run hand in glove with their Governments, including in particular energy and water utilities, cement manufacturers etc., have with the active connivance of bent British politicians, seized control of vast swathes of the British economy over recent years under camouflage of the Common Market and later the EU.

Now they seem able to gloat, witness yesterdays attack by the head of the Banque de France and member of the Governing Council of the ECB, Christian Noyer, read here. Worse their broadcasters seem to be enjoying our plight and broadcasting the results in English:



It is our British politicians and traitors we must now bring to account, the better for the truth behind our impoverishment to be fully revealed and thus reversed!

Moody's warns on France - Schauble must be ecstatic!

Read the warning from here. EU ongoing incompetence seems set to deliver another traumatic week on the markets, just what Wolfgang Schauble told the New York Times he thought was necessary to drive Germany's ambitions for Europe, as blogged below this last weekend!

Moody's Italian downgrade from Irish Times & the delayed meeting of Sarkozy/Merkel.

The downgrade of Italy by three notches with a negative outlook is best covered from this link.

Attention from the markets will focus on the interest rate increases Italy will now incur and the state of the French Banks. Last evening it was reported some €80 billion of loans would be transferred from troubled Dexia to two state-owned French banks one of which is the equivalent of Britain's Post Office Savings Bank! Such arrangements cannot leave France's sovereign date rating unaffected for very much longer. One earlier report is here, which ends with these supposedly re-assuring paragraphs:

Local governments across France have found their taxpayers' investments at risk and Paris and Brussels are determined not to allow Dexia to fail.
But the CDC and La Poste, which manage funds from French small savers' tax free deposit accounts, are seeking to negotiate with the state a "very tight framework" for their involvement that would not expose the public to risk.
The sources added that said the CDC would not undertake any investment that would endanger its own triple-A credit rating.

The delay in a meeting between Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, (who had been hinting it would be over the coming days,) has now been announced as coming just before the next EU summit on 17th October, thirteen days after its announcement, a clear sign that Germany seems content to let the French handle the current crisis on their own!

France approaches the end of its tether!

Open Europe daily email press briefing today has this extract from a leading French daily newspaper:

In Le Figaro, French Professor Édouard Tétreau argues, “France has already voted two bailout plans for Greece in two years, coming with a cost of more than €30bn – the equivalent of what is raised from income taxes in France in seven months. Who would agree, in our country, to work seven months to subsidise the lifestyle of people who are unable to pay their own taxes? By subsidising this organised robbery, we are not doing Greece, or Europe, a favour.” He suggests that the time has come to “drop Greece in order to save Europe. Sometimes, one needs to have an arm cut to survive.”

Worse still is the following exposé from Acting Man, linked here, of the French bank's exposure to other EU crisis-riven former nations:

France's biggest banks, which are known to have the biggest direct exposure to Greek government debt in Europe. As a result, Moody's has already downgraded these banks. However, the problems the French banks potentially face go well beyond Greece – as we noted in a recent update, they hold some € 140 billion in Spanish debt and € 400 billion in Italian debt. Overall, the liabilities of the three biggest French banks (Credit Agricole, BNP Paribas and Societe Generale) amount to €4.7 trillion – 250% of France's GDP.

€7.33 Billion euros will be the cost to slash mere minutes between Bordeuax and Tours

France is under pressure, rumours abound regarding its banks, its credit rating and the losses still being committed from the national coffers to somehow ease the plight of the doomed Euro.

Yet work is just beginning on a seven billion euro project designed to shave mere minutes from the jouney time by rail between Tours and Bordeaux, as blogged about here yesterday and earlier today.

As promised, here are some pictures, taken this afternoon, of the work in progress in the still charming Charente countryside between Mouthiers and Porcheresse.

 

The village of Voulgezac before work starts on the quarry and landfill behind.

A works depot under construction at Pérignac Déchetterie

Deforestation at Porcheresse

A high-speed train ambles its way along a viaduct giving today's passengers superb views of the Boëme River vally

The biggest single project of the whole entirely wasteful scheme will be a 1319 metre bridge crossing of the Gironde River, which this recent article from Sud-Ouest decribes on this link.

This blog will explore alternatives for a less costly speedier trans-EU link, ignoring the glories of former capitals in the coming days!

The Parisian mindset of the EU and its truly horrendous costs.

Graham Robb in his very readable book "Discovering France" published in English by W.W. Norton ISBN 978-0-393-33364-0, makes much of the domination of Paris and Parisians in what people understand as France. On page 307 he writes in amplification of the effect of this fact on the provinces (..."which is to say in 1880, 99.9 per cent of the land and 94 per cent of the population,") as follows:

"Since so much of what was written about France was published in Paris and written for Parisians - or for urban bourgeois who looked to Paris as a model - the state of cultural civil war was never as obvious in books as it was in daily life. A cyclist (such as this book's author - blog editor's note) on holiday in the Vendée in 1892 found that a few disobliging remarks about Parisians ensured cooperation and courtesy from the local peasants, who had an instinctive antipathy to the capital. The word 'parisien' is still uttered as an insult in many parts of France, and any visitor with derogatory things to say about Paris is always likely to be treated sympathetically, even by bureaucrats."

The writer of this blog, from several years of living in SW France, can also attest to the accuracy of the above observations.

The effect of this superiority, as felt by Parisians, is reflected in the infrastructure of the entire country of France. The maps provided by Mr Robb on page 224 of the Norton paperback edition, some of which are reproduced below, illustrate this fact very clearly:

So how has this mindset been transferred to the EU, and with what results and disastrous economic consequences, to obtain detail on that visit this linked pdf file

I will be posting further on this topic, with some recent images of the resulting complete waste of infrastructure development and the shameless shovelling of the costs onto local communities. One example of which "LGV EST"  budget is provided below as a taster:

Budget:
Other sources (RFF): €557,304,000
Total project cost covered
by this Decision: €633,300,000
EU contribution: €75,996,000
Percentage of EU support:
Works: 12%

From Wikipedia we learn Alsace must pay €300 million to the TGV Est for what appears to be little material gain:

• This will be the first LGV construction in which local communities have had to participate financially together with the state government and European Union. The contribution was fixed following a capital structure group discussion of the communities, depending on the time decrease for users in relation to the Île de France. Alsace has therefore had to pay almost €300 million. It is possible that this financial model will continue for the second phase.

Normally this blog would not concern itself with what at first appears to be a local issue involving only France, but as France's credit rating has today become crucial to the world's economic crisis, it seems worth informing a much wider audience of the sheer waste underway in a purely propaganda based, typically "Parisien" grandiose project.

Sarkozy's impossible dream!

As Wall Street was about to close last evening, Societe Generale's Frédéric Oudéa, its Chairman and CEO, was interviewed on CNBC, read here (with video link). Minutes later the Dow closed down 521 points for a loss of 4.6%.

Responding well to technical questions on his bank's exposure to Greek debt and Basel III capital requirements, Mr Oudéa, appeared to me less sure in his remarks on France and his shareholder Groupama. On the latter, the capitalisation of his shareholders is indeed not his concern, but were they experiencing difficulties in raising cash against their reported shareholding of 4% in SG itself, as the question appeared to imply, that would indeed be cause of concern for other shareholders and the share prices.

Worse still on the situation of France itself, Monsieur Oudéa's remarks seemed very wide of what could have been expected. Given the conflicting objectives and intents over recent months as stated by President Sarkozy, the Societe Generale Chairman's assertion below beggars my belief!

"We're in good hands," he said of French President Nikolas Sarkozy's government"

The French President, speaking of himself and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has recently gone on record as saying that there was nothing they would not do to save the Euro currency and thereby their EU project. Re-inforced by this more recent declaration.

Subsequent actions undertaken by the ECB, to undermine market forces in the Italian and Spanish bond markets, which will ultimately have to be funded by enormous financial commitments from the German and French Treasuries will inevitably impact the Sovereign credit ratings of both states.

Short of the political establishments intervening in the mad commitments now being undertaken by their elected Heads of State, matters cannot be resolved until General Elections have been completed in both France and Germany, by which time the damage will most probably be well beyond even extremely painful repair.

That is the cause of the panic in world markets and the dizzying heights being reached by gold. The French authorities will not have to look far for the source of such market concerns, as threatened by Mr Oudéa. If a nation's Head of State has expressed a willingness to sacrifice all, for an unattainable concept, the fate of his country's second largest bank is presumably of comparatively little importance! (Although, until now, I had apparently mistakenly believed that sacrificing all else to save their banks had previously been the prime objective acrsoo the West.)

The following great words for a song come to mind for where we now seem headed, but a lousy way to run your country's economy: “Dream the impossible dream, Fight the unbeatable foe, Strive with your last once of courage To reach the unreachable star.”

Euro concerns now centre on France and its banks!

As the ECB throws yet more money at Italian and Spanish bonds, the supposed beneficiaries, the banks of the Eurozone's centre, in particular France come under relentless pressure, as may be read from this link.

AFP reports the following on Societe Generale and Sarkozy's rushed return from vacation:

The bank's shares briefly dropped 20.24% before recovering to stand down 13.1 percent at 22.6 euros.

The tumble came as President Nicolas Sarkozy broke off his summer vacation to meet with ministers to discuss France's deficit-reduction plans amid the debt crisis rattling global markets.

S & P Market derived signal on CDS for France issue stark warning.

How the liabilities being incurred by the ECB bond buying will eventually be met seems still unknown.

Credit Default Swaps for France indicate that country will be exposed to meeting some of such costs, follow them from here.

The Wall Street Journal has a report stating that one division of S & P is already reading the signs of where France's rating could well soon stand, read here. A quote:

Separately, though, a statistic produced by a different S&P unit--one not involved in rating countries--called Market Derived Signal says France's rating should already be six notches below that of the U.S. The measure, which is supposed to capture market sentiment of perceived credit risk based on credit-default swaps, has tumbled for France the past month to BBB-plus from AA. This rating for the U.S. has been AA-plus for four months.