French President Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffled his cabinet over the weekend, and in line with recent precedent under the Fifth Republic, the new government marks a shift back to Sarkozy’s political base in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election in 2012. So centrist Defense Minister Hervé Morin and Socialist Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner are out, replaced by UMP heavyweights Alain Juppé and Michèle Alliot-Marie, respectively. The fact that Juppé and Alliot-Marie are both dyed-in-the-wool Chirac loyalists also serves to heighten Dominique de Villepin’s isolation from the Sarkozy court, and could be an indicator of where on the right Sarkozy feels the [...]
One of my father’s favorite expressions is that character equals destiny. Nowhere did that seem more evident than in the run-up to today’s G-20 summit, which resembled a classical Greek tragedy: The audience sees the obvious resolution to the crisis, but the actors — prisoners of their character, and thus their destiny — plow onward to their fate. So despite the need for a harmonious summit to fend off the gathering currency wars, the U.S. Fed chose last week to announce its quantitative easing policy, promptly denounced by just about all of the U.S. interlocutors at the G-20 forum. But [...]
I haven’t discussed the French pension reforms, and the strikes opposing them, because it’s taken me a while to dial in the broader context that I felt was lacking in a lot of the debate. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has for the most part used demographic arguments to justify the reforms, which essentially involve moving the age of retirement from the age of 60 to 62. The growing pool of retirees coupled with budget shortfalls makes the need for reform obvious. The problem is one of distributing the increased burden fairly. Here, Sarkozy shot himself in the foot by making [...]
