The economic stimulus plan, eagerly awaited for several weeks, will be presented by the government on Thursday.

But the promise of an investment of 100 billion euros, some personalities think that it will not be enough.

They are asking the State to go into massive debt by taking advantage of extremely low interest rates. 

The economic recovery plan of 100 billion euros will be detailed tomorrow.

But a debate is already raging: will it be enough? 

The question, obviously, is provocative: 100 billion is a gigantic sum, almost a third of the State budget, three times the annual defense budget ... And yet, on the occasion of this Covid crisis, certain personalities like the boss of the investment bank Lazard (Jean-Louis Girodolle), like Alain Minc or others plead for doing much more.

With an argument: you have to take advantage of the fact that interest rates are zero or even negative to get into massive debt. 

A prospect that frightens Bercy ... 

Bercy, the Banque de France, Brussels, in short the camp of the Orthodox who say: we are among the mad, we already have a huge debt, we are not going to increase it massively.

But faced with them, the supporters of this debt strategy say: you haven't understood anything, we can no longer reason as before, we have changed the paradigm, we must take advantage of this historic window to get into debt since rates are negative.

With a limit anyway: that this debt finances investment spending.

In short, that it serves to modernize our economy, to take it to a new level in key technologies, to strengthen our businesses.

But you see, there is a real debate between those who think that we must rethink the subject of debt and that we can spend a lot more and then those who are worried about this headlong rush by pointing the mountain of debt that we are leaving to our children. 

But you said, 100 billion is already huge, would it really be justified to do more? 

I think more needs to be done on two points.

First, the crisis has devastated the financial situation of many companies, their debt has soared, they will lack capital, especially to invest.

The envelope planned to recapitalize companies, 3 billion euros, is not up to the problem.

We will quickly realize it.

If there is one thing to correct in this plan, this is it.

I would add that given what we have heard from business leaders, namely that there are a multitude of workforce reduction plans in preparation, it will certainly be necessary to extend the envelope provided for partial unemployment.

Because the coming months will be very difficult on the social level.