Content of The Report
The report stated that ordinary revenues in France were exceeding expenditure by over 10 million livres. The health of the accounts as reported in the Compte rendu boosted confidence among lenders and ordinary people, who saw Necker as a strong financial manager due to his prior experience as a banker; the report bolstered his reputation further. As a consequence, the French government was able to raise new loans to pay for the costs of continued involvement in the American War of Independence.
However, Necker's reporting of the accounts obscured the financial problems which the country was facing: it did not report the extraordinary accounts, where the real cost of the war was to be found and which showed France in a significant deficit - between 1777 and 1781, Necker had raised 520 million livres in new loans. Had these been reported, lenders would have been unlikely to continue to lend money for the war.
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