France under pressure from rating agencies

For now, France is retaining its two “A’s”. The first, Antoine Armand, young Minister of Economy and Finance, remains at Bercy as long as the government escapes the specter of censorship. The rating of French debt, for its part, oscillates between “AA” and “AA-”, depending on the rating agencies. This Friday, around 10 p.m., after the American Stock Exchange closes, Standard & Poor's will conclude the autumn sequence of sovereign debt ratings. We will then know whether France, which lost its “triple A” in 2012 in the midst of the euro zone crisis, retains its “double A” or not against a backdrop of deep budgetary uncertainty.

On May 31, the American agency, whose opinion is particularly scrutinized, lowered the French rating by one notch, moving it from “AA” (the equivalent of 18 out of 20) to “AA-” (17 out of 20), with a stable outlook. In other words, the demotion in…