It looks like the French are going to run right winger Sarkozy out of office and they may elect a socialist in his place. However, the strong showing by the ultra right proto fascist Marie Le Pen and her goons may complicate things.
You, Mr. or Ms. US Citizen, may be asking, 'Why is this important to me?" Well, put down that super sized burrito burger nacho milkshake and turn off America's Next Top Idle and I'll tell you.
Our European trading partners, especially Germany's Angela Merkel have been pushing financial austerity as the path of the future for Europe's troubled economies, that means she's demanding little or no government investment in the private sector, massive cuts to social programs, and privatization of almost everything. These policies, even though they've been thoroughly discredited and shown to be detrimental to economic recovery, are supposed to bring back the moribund economies of Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, England, and some want them in place here in the USA. And siding with Merkel are the right wingers Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, and Sarkozy, head right winger in France.
Now, if Sarkozy loses, Merkel loses a key ally in her quest to shove financial austerity up the asses of the working masses in Europe. And if enough people take to the streets to protest austerity and the new socialist head of France puts his foot down and demands higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, then maybe instead of making the poor and working folks pay to clean up the mess, they'll make the ones who caused it in the first place pay to clean it up.
If Obama loses a right wing head of state buddy in the G7, then maybe he'll stop swallowing the lie that we need financial austerity here in the USA. Maybe this new French head of state will push back against the mania for balancing budgets and get us back on the path to bigger government investment in our economies, you know, like the kind that got us out of the Great Depression of the 1930's.
2 comments:
And the Tories are sliding quickly down the polls. All in time for the 2012 games in London, which could be very very interesting. Meanwhile, Greece is ready to explode, again, Spain is at the edge, and Italy....oh boy. Europe may end up saving us.
I was thinking about this post while reading about Hollande... I think we can only hope that he has enough of a core to push for the good of the people.
It seems likely that he does.
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