WorldcrunchFrance’s top business daily, Les Echos covers domestic and international economic, financial and markets news. Founded in 1908, the newspaper has been the property of French luxury good conglomerate LVMH (Moet Hennessy – Louis Vuitton) since 2007.
PARIS — Are there pictures? Nowadays, in almost every criminal inquiry, this is the first thing judges and prosecutors ask. “We can’t work without these tools,” says Elisabeth Sellos-Cartel, video-protection officer in the Interior Ministry’s security cooperation delegation. “Big Brother is watching you” is no longer a concept of much concern, it seems, to authorities […]
The digital behemoths Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have long sold dreamy ideals. In reality, their business models are very conventional. Their extraordinary power is founded solely on their digital leverage.
-OpEd- PARIS — When Amazon realized that its AI recruiting tool favored men, the company quickly shelved it. Back in 2016, a chatbot released by Microsoft turned into a sex-obsessed neo-Nazi machine in only 24 hours. These incidents, along with others, played right into the hands of all those who say there is too much […]
Google and Amazon are trying to force us to speak politely to their AI-driven personal assistants. But giving souls to our technology is a dangerous return to the past.
-OpEd- PARIS — Between all the brutal Brexit fireworks, the British government took an initiative of rare poetic dimension by establishing a “Building Better, Building Beautiful” commission. According to its official terms of reference, the commission’s task is to “develop practical policy solutions to ensure the design and style of new developments, including new settlements […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Did they really have to set France on fire for just a few cents? More than eight weeks after it began, the revolt of the “yellow vests’ still seems hard to grasp. For extremists on all sides who happily fanned the flames, it looked like the much-awaited beginning of the great revolution, […]
Standing alone against the United States and China, Europe must wake up in 2019. And come together.
Published 300 years ago, Daniel Defoe’s classic story of shipwreck and survival still has much to teach us about human nature and the environment.
Even as it contends still with Brexit and the rise of right-wing populists, the European Union did enjoy some ‘almost good news’ this year.
-OpEd- PARIS — In the sometimes cacophonous concert of demands from France’s “yellow vests’ protest movement, one measure keeps coming back: the Référendum d’initiative citoyenne (RIC), or “Citizens’ Initiative Referendum,” which allows individual citizens to submit a legislative text to a popular vote, and to thus express their opinions in the ballot box rather than […]
The EU remains a work in progress, especially with Britain’s messy exit efforts. But if there’s one constant, it’s that Europe still needs France and Germany to be partners.
The fashion industry sees that protection of the environment is a hot selling point, and maybe also a long-term trend.
How VR can help patients suffering from eating disorders, phobias and schizophrenia.
Google tried and failed to play the social media game. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the tech giant, which is doing just fine by sharing the tech market with California rival Facebook.
In the West, the era of grand, strategic pacts between nation-states seems to have come and gone. But in Asia, the trend may just be catching on.
The ‘yellow vest’ uprising is about more than Macron’s ill-conceived fuel tax. It’s symptomatic of a system-wide failure that must be fixed before it’s too late.
After being left behind in the Internet revolution, places like France, Malta and Switzerland are making a concerted effort to stay ahead of the crypto-asset curve.
Despite Kremlin denials, Western sanctions are hitting Russia hard, and prompting its president to look elsewhere for new alliances and opportunities.
A path through Lebanon, Brazil and France, the former top Michelin manager may have met the end of the road in Japan.
PARIS — What if the GAFA quartet (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) also became giants in the healthcare sector? Google first tried to put on the white coat more than a decade ago. After “Google Health,” its online medical record project abandoned in 2012, the company made a strong comeback with its subsidiary DeepMind Health, doing […]
Against the omnipotence of ‘reality-show novels’ and costume fiction, a group of young French authors want to reassert the novel as a contemporary art.
-OpEd- PARIS — While Brexit uncertainty continues with “last-chance summit” after “last-chance summit,” the hard questions are becoming more difficult to avoid with each passing day. Are we moving towards a brutal divorce? Or a compromise? Will the Irish question turn everything upside down? Can a second referendum turn the tide? All these questions refer […]
November 11, 2018 marks 100 years since the end of World War I. The signing of the Armistice brought to an end the war that Ernest Hemingway called “the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth.” A century on, as the world celebrates the anniversary with ceremonies and memorials, this […]
-Analysis- PARIS — And then, Brazil. The list of countries that are switching to so-called “strongman” regimes keeps growing. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Narendra Modi’s India, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The “people” leave it up to a candidate who has promised the end of corruption and economic recovery. In […]
To act, let’s start by not looking away.
-Essay- PARIS — I shall spare my readers today a highfalutin reflection on the obsolescence of the French Fifth Republic, evolutions in Romanian culture or the worldwide rise of the extreme Right — thanks to Banksy! The uber-famous but ever elusive London street artist recently returned to the limelight with another of his visual pranks: […]
Will slow growth rates persist in a global dynamic of ‘secular stagnation?’ Or will the IT revolution set off new bursts of productivity?
For Westerners, particularly the United States, Mohammed bin Salman had represented the hope of a kingdom finally prepared to open to the world. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi demonstrates the contrary. Donald Trump will not escape this unscathed.
The U.S./China trade war is also sparking a currency conflict, one that brings to mind the international climate in the early years of the the Great Depression.
After 17 months in power, Emmanuel Macron is touching the depths of unpopularity. He still has ways to bounce back, but should start by re-reading the author of ‘The Prince.’
Despite billions in fines against the U.S. giant by the European Commission, Google continues to crush Europe’s once-prosperous price comparison services.
As U.S. hegemony fades, the dollar has become the worst currency in the world — expect, of course, for all the others.
PARIS — This past summer, Parisians bid adieu to Autolib”, a pioneering electric-car-sharing service that came to a premature demise after operating for fewer than seven years. But that doesn’t mean the French capital is turning its back on the overall concept. There is a plan B in the works, though what exactly it will […]
-OpEd- PARIS — The gravity of the situation at the White House grows clearer each day. The anonymous article published by the New York Times in which a high-ranking official from the Trump administration describes the internal resistance, coupled with the publication of “Fear,” in which the investigative journalist Bob Woodward, celebrated for his role […]
The author of ‘Infinite Jest’ and ‘The Pale King’, who took his own life 10 years ago, saw a higher meaning in the mundane — even wrestling with the French bureaucracy.
The French president is the populist Italian Interior Minister’s favorite target. But is Salvini attacking Macron to mask his own failure to unite Europe’s nationalists?
Donald Trump’s all-out trade war has a singular source of ammunition, even as China is pushing to make the RMB a global currency on par.
Education and experience certainly play a role in how well an individual understands other people’s feelings. But there may be certain genetic predispositions at work too.
It’s time to overhaul the Old Continent’s roads, bridges, airports and electrical systems. And like it or not, private investment has a role to play.
Rescuing the planet from the ravages of capitalism may be just the thing our dominant economic system needs to save itself, columnist Jean-Marc Vittori argues.