Economist Quote of the Day
10 May 2011 at 11:56 am Peter G. Klein 4 comments
| Peter Klein |
Arthur Goldhammer on the upcoming French elections:
This will be Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s challenge, since he will be running, if he runs, in part on his credentials as an economist. He has to make sure that this word means something other than “scold” or, worse, “tool of capital.”
I would imagine that heading the IMF is not a particularly popular launching point for the Presidency either. In other countries being a leader of the Socialist Part might hurt but, well, this is France.
Organizations and Markets 
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Randy | 10 May 2011 at 7:42 pm
The bloom is off the rose for the Socialists in France, as well.
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Michael E. Marotta | 11 May 2011 at 6:42 am
It may be an axiom that people get the government they deserve. In a democracy that seems tautologous, but even brutes need a niche in which to survive. Reading The Invention of Enterprise Landes, Mokyr and Baumol eds., Michael Hau’s chapter on France does not predict a new dawn anytime soon. While America and Britain were enthusiastic, China and India historicallly at least offered periods of benign neglect, a not-quite-laissez-faire in which merchantry could work unobstructed by the cultural disdain which engenders political intervention. France, of course, is just the opposite. Its long, broad, and deep history of Colbertism (Jean-Baptiste unfortunately, not Stephen) does not offer much promise for the present.
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Randy | 14 May 2011 at 10:25 pm
Strauss-Kahn may discover that being an IMF economist is not as politically troublesome as a lapse in his résumé due to being an inmate in Sing-Sing. Even in France…
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Peter Klein | 15 May 2011 at 1:05 am
Waiting for the inevitable wisecracks about him doing to his alleged victim what the IMF has been doing to various countries for years….
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