This Manufacturing Report From France Is Just Plain Ugly

This is bad for France.

We've been getting manufacturing reports from around the world today, and mostly they've been okay.

The Spanish and Italian numbers have been quite nice actually. But France? Really ugly.

According to Markit, the manufacturing sector has hit a 7-month low, dropping from 48.4 in November to 47.0 in December. You can just see on the chart how sickly the sector is.

The fact that France is doing so badly while other peripheral countries are outperforming and the world economy gets better generally is a strong point in favor of the argument that there's something deeply wrong with the French economy.