French press review 3 December 2012

The French take on the US's fiscal cliff. Is Damascus facing carnage and chaos? And what does the ArcelorMittal deal mean for steelworkers' jobs ... and Arnaud Montebourg's?

You'll know that the United States are less than one month away from the dreaded "fiscal cliff", the drastic cuts in federal spending and huge tax increases which will automatically come into effect for everyone on 1 January, unless Democrats and Republicans can come to a different deal on ways of saving the federal government from going down the gurgler.

Basically, according to business paper Les Echos, the Democrats are proposing an immediate boost of 50 billion dollars to be spent on infrastructure projects, along with 80 billion in savings on federal expenses, which combination should be enough to push the deadline from 1 January to 1 August.

The idea is to create a bit of breathing space in which to work out an effective, long-term plan to reduce the US deficit from the 1,000-billion-dollar level of the past four years.

But the Republicans are insisting in further cuts in the MediCare programme, they want to preserve Bush-era tax advantages for the well-off, they want to reduce the amount the federal government contributes to retirement benefit.

The influential Wall Street Journal says stock market indicators suggest that a deal will be struck before the January deadline because neither side wants to see the US go into recession.

Catholic La Croix looks at the way the civil war in Syria has moved into the heart of the capital, Damascus.

The civilian population is now caught between insurgents and government units intent at slowing the rebel advance. According to most commentators, if president Assad decides to fight to the end, Damascus will be the scene of indescribable carnage.

And that won't be the end of Syria's troubles by a long shot.

As one diplomat says in La Croix, the transition will be long and difficult. Once the president has been overthrown, that will launch the first chapter of a battle between Syria's various communities.

And the other front-page preoccupation is the deal struck last week between the French government and the ArcelorMittal steel empire.

The jobs have been saved but the steel company is the real winner says Le Monde.

Where the whole business leaves the French Minister for Industrial Renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, he who said France didn't want industrialists like Lakshmi Mittal and suggested nationalisation as an answer, is a different question.