as read in this week issue of The Economist... "(...)Mr Sarkozy was elected last year on a promise to get the French back to work, to allow them to earn more, to end the welfare culture and to encourage risk and reward merit. But recently the president has sounded a different note. He has declared that "laissez-faire capitalism is over" and railed against the "dictatorship of the market". He is setting up a "strategic national investment fund" to take stakes in French companies so as to protect them from foreign predators. His prime minister, Francois Fillon, has threatened to nationalise banks unless they lend more to companies. And Mr Sarkozy has also pledged to create 100,000 state-subsidised jobs of just the sort favoured by a former Socialist government, which he denounced vigorously during his election campaign. This lurch to the left has not gone unremarked by real socialists. Martin Schulz, German leader of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, has congratulated the French president for "speaking like a real European socialist". It was a taunt that the president chose, uncharacteristically, not to dismiss. "Have I become socialist?" he wondered. "Perhaps." The ambiguity is such that some on the left now see a need to reclaim their ideology. A testy Pierre Moscovici, a French Socialist, insisted to the newspaper Le Parisien recently that "No, Mr Sarkozy is not a socialist. He is a communist in disguise" Part of Mr Sarkozy's enthusiasm for state intervention can be explained by the financial crisis. With even the Americans and British bailing out companies with public money, the state is back in favour in the least likely places. The word "French", which during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was sometimes employed in America as an abusive synonym for "spineless", is now more likely to be used to mean "socialist". When Jim Bunning, an American senator, heard that the government had taken control of two big American mortgage lenders he said he felt as if he had "woken up in France". In some ways, indeed, Mr Sarkozy is simply returning to French interventionist tradition, with the economic crisis providing a ready excuse. (...)" Source and full article:http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12607041 Exactly not the type of leader we need, not now, never
B.S. Sarkozy is not a socialist by any means. He is trying to do the right thing in the face of the collapse of US style capitalism , if he fails you 'll see the true socialist à la Mitterand take over in France and that would be a problem. Sarkozy will nationalize the banks if need be to protect them from what some argue has become an organized plundering of the financial system by Paulson and his cronies at Goldman, Morgan and Citi. If that's what's going on , Europe has to take steps to protect what is left of its financial system's independence. And by calling the French spineless the Economist is once again reminding us how wrong they have been on many issues , the French didn't want to go to Iraq because they weren't completely dumb and irrational over 9/11 as you had become. As much as I like America, the US has destroyed the world in the past 8 years. The French look in comparison very smart.
Sarkozy is a populist that will vary his speech according to his audience. France being socialist at heart, it tends to cater to the what the sheeps expect, i.e. bashing of the bankers, the entrepreneurs,... which is effectively socialo-populism. I remember Sarkozy coming to London trying to lure all these French financiers in voting for him, how he would change France so that they could come back. Now that he is in power, all we can hear is bashing of capitalism, finger pointing at bankers,... Instead of being a strong advocate of freedom and liberalism in these difficult times, Sarkozy is pushing his own agenda dictated by a nation of assisted and jealous people. socialo populism Come on France, get back to reality, you are insignificant now, accept it and please understand that the little man with a big ego is no Napoleon. One more thing, stop trying give lessons to the world, you're not helping.
The jealous people in America are SEEKING to become "assisted"... with NObama's "agenda"... Makes me want to just PUKE!
Sarkozy is now becoming less of a communist than Brown or Darling, the United States of Socialist Europe, USSE, here we come