throughout the nation, and their government took the lead in developing the supersonic airliner. Their high-speed rail service was so successful that double-decker carriages have been introduced on the main link between Paris and Lyon to handle the flood of passengers and the Train Grande Vitesse so outdid Britain in its bullet links to the Channel that railway executives across the narrow sea were reduced to making jokes about the virtue of giving travellers time to appreciate the Kent countryside. France entered 1999 with an annualised inflation rate of 0.3 per cent, wage settlements are low, and the government insisted that events in Asia and Russia would not seriously dent its growth forecasts. Strong exports and limited imports have boosted the trade performance since 1992, with 1997 producing a record surplus of 231 billion francs. The budget deficit was officially forecast to fall to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 1999 just over half its level in the mid-1990s. As the decade progressed, the franc grew so muscular that the speculator George Soros was reported to believe that it might be the key European currency of the future rather than the Deutschmark. When the US dollar and sterling showed their own muscles later in the decade, exporters reaped a dividend that compensated for low domestic demand. Such was the international confidence in the economy that, at one point, France was able to pay lower interest on bonds than Germany. The value of the Paris Bourse has soared, with the trading volume rising by 39 per cent in 1998. Pursuit of shareholder value by a new breed of managers attracted foreign funds in their billions non-French investors accounted for half the turnover on the stock market. Overall, France became the fourth biggest recipient of foreign investment in the world, as companies such as IBM, Motorola and FedEx developed their operations and, most significantly, Toyota decided to build a 4-bi...
