Genevihve Buot, a French microbiologist, is telling me about the time she used homeopathy instead of antibiotics to treat her son’s ear infection.
Says Buot: “He had what was essentially a messy mucus plug in his ear. It can be very painful and, when not treated, dangerous. I took my son to a conventional doctor who was adamant about treating him with antibiotics. I took the prescription but never filled it. Instead I used a combination of ferrum phosphoricum, aviaire and arsenicum album. When I went back to the same doctor to check on my son’s ear, the doctor was overjoyed. ‘Your son’s ear is perfect,’ he said. I never told him that I’d actually used homeopathy.”
Buot is among the roughly 40 percent of the French population who use homeopathic medicine to treat everything from colds, flu and measles to depression, anxiety and insomnia. The same percentage of clinical physicians regularly use homeopathy in their practices, and the French government reimburses the cost of homeopathic medicines. Indeed, collections of substances in thin tubes and vials with curious Latin names — belladonna, bryonia and pulsatilla — are as common in French homes as spice racks.
While the French remain the world’s largest consumers of homeopathy (and also the biggest consumers of pharmaceutical products in the industrialized world, an apparent contradiction that is particular to the French), the U.S. homeopathic market is growing quickly. According to the National Center for Homeopathy, sales of homeopathic products in the United States increased from $170 million in 1995 to $400 million in 1999. Still, despite the colossal boom in alternative health care in America (a market estimated at $18 billion), homeopathy remains a mystery to many in this country.
What exactly is homeopathy? In the late 1700s Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician disenchanted with contemporary health care, set off on a quest to study the effects of various natural substances on his body. To avoid problems of toxicity he used substances at smaller and smaller doses, thereby establishing a fundamental aspect of homeopathy — infinitesimal dilutions.
Hahnemann was convinced that “the same things which cause the disease cure it” — a principle espoused by Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C. Hahnemann’s first experiment with the plant cinchona to cure the symptoms brought on by ingesting the same plant was decisive. He went on to study an entire range of plant, mineral and animal substances on himself, and eventually created the foundation of what would later become the official Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia still used today.
Hahnemann influenced an entire generation of European and American health practitioners. By the mid-1800s there were several homeopathic medical colleges in Europe and the United States, and one in five doctors used homeopathy, especially to fight cholera epidemics. While the move toward a more mechanistic view of the body and the growing use of pharmaceuticals eventually pushed homeopathy into obscurity in the United States (by the late 1940s homeopathy courses were virtually nonexistent), successive generations of European clinical physicians and pharmacists inspired by Hahnemann’s work created the bedrock on which homeopathy thrives today on the Continent, particularly in France.
Simply put, homeopathy involves treating a patient with infinitesimal doses of a substance similar to that which caused the illness in the first place. In this general way homeopathy shares the same premise as vaccination: that it is possible to cure a patient of a disease by administering the same substance that would induce that disease in him if he were well. The National Center for Homeopathy uses as an example a plant root called ipecacuanha, which means “the plant by the road that makes you throw up”; eating it causes vomiting. If a woman experiencing morning sickness is not relieved by natural vomiting, then ipecacuanha, administered in extremely small doses in accordance with Food and Drug Administration guidelines, can allay her “similar” suffering.
Dana Ullman is a leading spokesman for homeopathy, an author and an advisory board member of alternative-medicine institutes at Harvard’s and Columbia’s schools of medicine. He uses a musical metaphor to describe the homeopathic law of “similars”: “If one piano is at one end of a room and if one strikes the C key, the C notes in another piano in the same room will reverberate. This experiment works because each key is hypersensitive to vibrations in its own key. This is called ‘resonance.’”
Ullman adds that the body’s symptoms are, in fact, a defense — “the body [trying] to fight a particular stress,” he says. “With traditional medicine symptoms are wrong, must be managed, stopped. We look for homeopathic medicines that mimic the symptoms. Homeopathic medicines will only work when a person has a hypersensitivity to them. This individually chosen medicine represents the same frequency as the person, and the energetics of the medicine can augment a powerful immune and healing response.”
“Energetics” is a buzzword used by many in the alternative-health field these days. According to author and physician Andrew Weil, “energy medicine” like homeopathy is one of the major medical developments of the 21st century. The energetics of homeopathy involves factoring into the diagnosis equation various psychological and emotional aspects of a person’s disposition.
Says Ullman: “It seems that most conventional physicians have been schooled in the ‘Marie Antoinette’ college of medicine, where they understand the body and head as two separate entities. Disease is a complex process that affects the whole person. Homeopaths do indeed seek to uncover various psychological symptoms as well as various idiosyncratic physical symptoms. These symptoms are ‘signs’ and ‘signals’ of the disease, and very relevant information about a person’s ‘body-mind’ metabolism. Homeopathy is based on the totality of physical and psychological characteristics that define the person.”
Homeopathy has its detractors, even in France, and the body-mind aspect is largely dismissed by conventional doctors as New Age psychobabble. “Sounds good in theory,” says Michel Tramos, a Paris general practitioner. “But in practice, it’s all about placebos. The theory of homeopathy is not scientific.”
Ullman counters that “there are many things that we don’t fully understand in theory — anesthesia, for example. We don’t entirely understand how it works in theory, but I’ve never heard anyone going into surgery question the theory behind it. Most homeopaths don’t bother with theory. They use homeopathy because it works. They’re clinicians.”
Numerous research studies, including double-blind and placebo tests done in conjunction with large health institutes, tend to support Ullman. Many of these studies are used by manufacturers of homeopathic products to counter dissent from the traditional medical community. There are a few manufacturers in the States — Standard Homeopathic, Nature’s Way (for whom Ullman formulates remedies) and Boericke & Tafel — but none of them produces the sheer volume that the French laboratory Boiron does.
Founded in 1932 in Lyon by twin-brother pharmacists, Boiron is the world leader in homeopathic products. Every year it manufactures 100 million tubes of 1,500 different homeopathic medicines and delivers 8 million specially prepared homeopathic remedies for individual prescriptions filled by 23,000 pharmacies around France. Its biggest seller is a cold and flu remedy called Oscillococcinum, which is used regularly by 5 million French and recently became the most commonly used homeopathic flu remedy in the United States. (U.S. sales of Oscillococcinum jumped 40 percent between the 1997 and 1998 flu seasons.)
Oscillococcinum is made from the heart and liver of Barbary ducks, but you won’t find any traces of feathers here. Almost all homeopathic products look exactly alike: tiny, translucent white pellets the size of fish eggs that bear no trace whatsoever of their original source.
Boiron uses 1,250 different plants, 1,800 natural substances of chemical or mineral origin and 300 biological strains. Much if not all of the plant material is found by medicinal plant harvesters like Rigis Buffihre. Every year Buffihre journeys through the upper valleys of the Forez, Jura and Pyrenees mountains in search of wild plants; he returns with 10 to 12 tons of material. The transformation of homeopathic medicine from its raw organic forms — be they Barbary duck livers or exotic-plant roots — to the sterile pellets is a complex, high-tech process that involves things like laminar air hoods, vacuum chambers, hydraulic presses, demijohns, filtration cartridges, air purification systems and centralized guidance systems, along with the sciences of thin-layer chromatography, densitometric interpretation, micropulverization, triple impregnation and thermoluminescence, to name just a few.
Homeopathic medicines are, in fact, the end products of sequential deconcentrations of basic substances, in which each operation is followed by thorough shaking known as “succussion.” In some cases, the resulting substance is so diluted that no molecule of the original substance remains in the medicine. This extreme form of dilution is precisely why many conventional doctors associate homeopathic medicines with placebos: The doses are so exceptionally small that, logic would suggest, no curative properties exist.
Ullman, however, sees no contradiction here. “There are many phenomena in nature in which extremely small doses of something can create powerful, even very powerful, effects,” he says. “One certainly cannot say that the atomic bomb is a placebo just because some extremely small atoms bump into each other.”
Jim LaValle, a pharmacist, homeopath and author of several books on alternative medicine, puts it differently. “The activity of hormones in the body commonly can occur in parts per million or less. An animal can change behavior with the scent of a single pheromone from several miles away. There have been several well-designed studies that reported that these high dilutions somehow have a physiologic effect. Some scientists feel that the dilution in water somehow holds a memory of the agent.”
The manufacture and sale of homeopathic medicines are regulated by the FDA. (The Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States was written into federal law in 1938 under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.) Most of the medicines are available without prescription and several insurance carriers cover them. They are often cheaper and usually safer than conventional drugs. “Homeopathy is curative, truly curative,” says Ullman, who predicts that major drug companies will soon seek to purchase or form joint ventures with homeopathic companies.
Homeopathy is not used only by homeopaths and physicians; there are 700 homeopathic veterinarians in France and 17 student chapters of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association among the 27 U.S. veterinary schools.
With the future of homeopathy looking bright in America, the French continue to do what they’ve been doing for more than 200 years. “I can’t even begin to assess how much money I’ve saved and how many potential negative side effects I’ve avoided using homeopathy in my home,” says Buot. “I have three teenage sons. They’re rarely sick.” When asked what she thinks about doctors who claim that homeopathy is essentially a placebo, she shrugs. “If you don’t understand homeopathy or have never used it regularly, you can’t have any idea what it’s all about. Of course conventional doctors deny the efficacy of it. It counters the very basis of pharmaceuticals, which are effective for certain things but not for everything. When I think about my son’s serious ear infection, I have all the proof I need. Granted, the doctor who prescribed the antibiotics would have told you that homeopathy is only psychological in its effects. But I promise you, there’s nothing psychological about ear mucus. Homeopathy works.”
Here’s a startling news item: “The Intouchables,” a lively if largely predictable Parisian comedy about a wealthy quadriplegic and his ne’er-do-well immigrant caretaker, has become the biggest international success in the history of French cinema. Indeed, according to some sources — and these things are notoriously difficult to measure on a global and historical scale — “The Intouchables” is now the biggest non-Anglophone film of all time, with a worldwide gross approaching $300 million.
But beyond the business headlines, what’s really fascinating about “The Intouchables” is the way it exposes the gulf in racial attitudes between France and the United States, along with another gulf that’s just as wide, the one that has film critics and cinephiles on one side and popular audiences on the other. Viewers in numerous countries have eagerly devoured this feel-good fable about two men of different races and classes who forge an improbable friendship (dubbed by some wags “Driving Monsieur Daisy”). While the audience for foreign-language film is inherently limited in America, there’s no reason to believe it won’t do well here also. At the same time, heated transatlantic debate has erupted over whether “The Intouchables” traffics in offensive racial stereotypes, with Variety critic Jay Weissberg writing an uncharacteristically angry review that accused the film of “Uncle Tom racism” and compared the Senegalese caretaker character to a “performing monkey.”
When Harvey Weinstein first acquired “The Intouchables” in the wake of its smash success in France, he clearly imagined another dark-horse Oscar contender, in the wake of “The Artist.” The film has racked up audience awards at film festival after film festival, and currently stands at No. 93 on IMDb’s user-generated “Top 250″ list. Omar Sy, the charismatic Afro-French actor who plays Driss, the caretaker, won this year’s César award (the French Oscar equivalent) for best actor, beating out actual Oscar winner Jean Dujardin. But with the looming possibility that “The Intouchables” could spark a divisive, soul-searching racial debate — which was precisely what squelched the Oscar hopes of “The Help” — those expectations have been downplayed. (That isn’t why “The Intouchables” is being released this week, with Weinstein and most of the film-biz aristocracy in Cannes, but the coincidence is oddly useful.)
Let me come clean right now and tell you that I enjoyed “The Intouchables” quite a bit. If you’re looking for a lightweight summer change of pace, with just a smidgen of Continental flair, here it is. Both Sy and co-star François Cluzet (of the hit thriller “Tell No One”) are marvelous, the former playing a guy who’s constantly in motion, both physically and psychologically, and the latter playing a depressed and repressed guy who literally can’t move, but whose real imprisonment has more to do with his spirit than his spinal cord. Don’t go expecting serious French art cinema, please; those who have described this movie as something like a mid-’80s Eddie Murphy comedy dressed up with classy Parisian settings are correct. But here’s the question, and I can’t answer it for you: Is that such a bad thing, in itself?
Once is not enough for a movie that’s made this much money, of course, and Weinstein already has an American remake in the works, possibly to star Colin Firth as stick-up-butt wheelchair dude. The real Eddie Murphy has gotten too old to play the loosey-goosey, pot-smoking sidekick, but there’s no shortage of guys who could do it: Jamie Foxx is the default setting these days, but I’d go for the suddenly hot Kevin Hart from “Think Like a Man.” I’m not claiming it’s aesthetically or sociologically valid to remake a French movie that already feels like a reheated Hollywood throwback, by the way. I’m saying it’s a cruel reality, like Dutch elm disease or Adam Sandler, and there’s no way to stop it.
To get back to the case at hand, I do understand what the haters find so offensive about “The Intouchables.” (The infelicitous English title, by the way, reflects the fact that they couldn’t really get away with calling it “The Untouchables,” could they?) I was pretty taken aback by Weissberg’s vituperative review, and I tend to believe that “Uncle Tom” is one of those expressions that white people should pretty much never use. On the other hand, I can only applaud him for abandoning the balanced, analytical mode of trade-magazine criticism and saying exactly what he damn well thinks. (As for comparing a black man to a monkey — well, I understand what Weissberg was getting at, but it’s an error of rhetoric, the sort of comment that makes nuance and context disappear.) And I know for sure, from hearing friends and acquaintances in and around the movie business complain about this film, that Weissberg is not alone.
I believe that Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, the writing-directing duo who made “The Intouchables,” are innocent of any bad intentions. In fact, “innocent” isn’t a bad word overall, for this movie and the worldview it represents. The French may pride themselves on being the most worldly and sophisticated of all people, but the debate in France about race and immigration and multiculturalism — which ramped up sharply after the suburban riots of 2005 — can sometimes sound strikingly naive to American ears. Until very recently, mainstream French opinion has resisted thinking about the nation in anything except homogeneous terms, despite growing Arab and black minorities (both immigrant and native-born) and evident social problems with segregation and discrimination. (The French census, for instance, is prohibited from collecting data on race or religion, so no one really knows how many French people are black or Islamic.)
There can be no question that the characters in “The Intouchables” are stereotypes, in the broad sense. Cluzet’s character, Philippe, is an aristocratic zillionaire who lives in an astonishingly luxurious flat in central Paris. Since being injured in a paragliding accident, he’s lived inside a cocoon of money and privilege, surrounded by antiques and modern art and a bevy of assistants. Sy’s character, Driss, is easygoing, good-hearted, lustful and uncultured, and his passions run toward pretty girls, getting high and vintage American R&B. Philippe hires Driss specifically because Driss doesn’t particularly want the job — he only shows up to get a signature for his benefits card — and feels no pity for Philippe.
Which is actually a pretty good reason. You get where this is going, most likely: Driss is a pretty inept caretaker, at least at first, but is the only person Philippe knows who will relate to him man to man. There’s a bit of borderline-homophobic humor about their enforced intimacy; there are interludes with hookers and fast cars and late-night conversations fueled by booze and marijuana. Driss learns to like Mozart and modern art; Philippe learns to get down with Earth Wind & Fire and gets some valuable tips about chicks. It’s probably fair to summarize this movie as being the story of a paralyzed white man who needs the help of a younger, stronger, more virile black man to reconnect with his own masculinity, and if you want to say that narrative reflects an underlying latticework of racist attitudes, I won’t argue with you. Then there’s the complicating factor that in the real-life story on which “The Intouchables” is based, the caretaker was of Algerian origin, and hence Arab rather than black. (The filmmakers have said they wanted to cast Sy, and built the story around him, but it’s certainly possible to render other interpretations.)
But one can concede all of that while still agreeing with French historian and multicultural activist François Durpaire, who has responded to Weissberg by arguing that the huge success of “The Intouchables” is likely to have positive effects in Europe’s emerging discussion of race and culture, even if the movie relies on crude generalizations. (Durpaire adds that if “The Intouchables” is offensive, so were the “Beverly Hills Cop” movies.) Movies are not meant to be seminars in sociology, after all, and most viewers will receive “The Intouchables” as an upbeat story about two guys from vastly different circumstances who turn out to have a lot in common and help each other, etc., rather than a lesson in racial semiotics.
Perhaps the strongest endorsement for “The Intouchables” has come from aging French ultra-nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has described it as an allegory about how the future of his nation depends on disenfranchised young immigrants from the suburbs. He thinks that’s a “dreadful” vision, mind you — but, seriously, who knew that guy was so smart?
“The Intouchables” opens this week in New York and Los Angeles, with wider national release to follow.
BERLIN, Germany – It started with a handshake, not a kiss. When Chancellor Angela Merkel and new French President Francois Hollande finally met in person on Tuesday evening, there was little of the warmth that marked her meetings with Nicolas Sarkozy in recent years.
Aides had downplayed the rendezvous as simply aimed at getting to know one another rather than about hammering out any policy. Yet the future of Europe could hinge on whether these two leaders find a way to work well together.
Rarely have two people met for the first time with so much baggage. Merkel refused to meet with Hollande during his election campaign, and made the highly unusual step of publicly backing his rival, fellow conservative Sarkozy. Hollande for his part seemed to be campaigning as much against Merkel as the incumbent, pledging to renegotiate the fiscal pact that she had championed.
Now the two have finally met face-to-face and the encounter seemed cordial if hardly warm. Following the ceremonial reviewing of the guard of honor – during which Merkel had to gently nudge Hollande in the right direction on the red carpet – the two held an hour -long meeting. They then addressed the throng of international journalists in a joint press conference during which Merkel remained stony-faced during much of Hollande’s comments, interspersed with the odd smile.
The pair did seek to downplay their differences and strike a friendly tone with Merkel even joking that the lightning that had struck Hollande’s plane on his way to Berlin was perhaps a “good omen.”
“I’m not sure whether there is sometimes more divergence perceived in the public realm than there really is,” the chancellor told the press conference. “We are aware of our responsibility, as Germany and France, for a positive development in Europe. Carried by this spirit I believe we will of course find solutions for the different problems.”
Both tried to show a united front on Greece, which risks ejection from the euro zone if it backs anti-austerity parties in the fresh elections likely after the parties failed to form a government. “Just like Frau Merkel,” Hollande said, he wanted Greece to remain in the euro zone while insisting that Athens meet the terms of the bailout agreement.
Yet when it came to the crux of the differences between the two, on austerity versus growth, it was obvious that the only thing that had been agreed so far was that they disagree.
After all, it remains to be seen how Merkel’s strict stance on rapidly reducing budget deficits can be married with Hollande’s plea for some kind of stimulus package to boost growth.
Hollande reiterated his promise to reopen talks about the fiscal pact, the agreement on strict budget discipline which he has said France will not ratify unless a growth element is also adopted.
“I said in the campaign, and I repeat today, that I want to renegotiate what was established at a certain moment,” Hollande told reporters. “Everything that can contribute to growth must be put on the table. I don’t want growth to be just a word, but tangible measures.”
He mentioned boosting competitiveness, as well as Euro bonds – essentially pooling the debt of euro zone members – something Merkel has so far flatly rejected.
He did not, however, mention tinkering with the European Central Bank’s mandate, surely a red line if ever there was one in Berlin.
For all the inauspicious beginnings, observers predict that the two will eventually hit it off. Both play on their modest, down- to-earth style and exude an air of pragmatism rather than charisma. Hollande depicts himself as “Mr Normal” in contrast to the Bling Bling of his predecessor Sarkozy, while the unassuming Merkel is often seen doing her own grocery shopping. And both are said to have a wry sense of humor in private.
Furthermore, Hollande’s gesture of appointing Germanophile Jean-Marc Ayrault as his prime minister will have gone down well in Berlin.
Yet, it is hardly a meeting of equals. Merkel is an old hand in European politics now, in her seventh year in office, while Hollande’s previous executive experience has been confined to serving as mayor of the small town of Tulle.
Furthermore Germany is the EU’s economic powerhouse, with its export-driven economy keeping the rest of the euro zone out of recession, according to figures released on Tuesday. And Berlin has long been calling the political shots in Europe, with the fiscal compact being dreamed up by Merkel, as a way of preventing EU states from getting into deeper debt in the future.
At the same time Merkel is increasingly isolated in Europe, as there is a growing realization that austerity is choking off growth. Hollande knows that other leaders, including conservatives like Italy’s Mario Monti, also want Berlin to budge on its debt reduction fixation.
Hollande came to Berlin straight from his inauguration ceremony in Paris. After beating Sarkozy on May 6 he will feel he has a mandate from the French people to push for a change of direction in Europe. Yet he also faces a tough economic situation back home, with just 0.1 percent growth in the first quarter and growing unemployment, now at a 13-year high of 10 percent. If the economy were to contract even further, it could make it very difficult to fulfill many of his campaign pledges, such as reversing Sarkozy’s pension reforms.
Merkel has her own problems, despite the strong economy. Her party, the conservative CDU, has just suffered a bruising defeat in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Her coalition is increasingly fractious, with Bavaria’s CSU leader Horst Seehofer publicly slamming the CDU candidate in North Rhine-Westphalia Norbert Roettgen on TV for his campaign, while the FDP is unpredictable due to an ongoing leadership crisis.
The fact that she needs a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to ratify the fiscal compact means she is dependent on the opposition SPD. And while the party has broadly backed her euro policy, it has been emboldened by Hollande’s victory and the strong showing in NRW. On Tuesday the party’s leaders said that they would delay the vote on the fiscal pact, originally scheduled for late May, saying it wanted to see concrete growth measures as well as austerity.
That would leave time for Merkel and Hollande to agree to some sort of compromise solution.
The pair said they will seek an agreement ahead of the next big summit of EU leaders in June. “It will be very important that Germany and France present their ideas together at this summit, and we have talked about the preparation,” Merkel said.
They will see each other before that, meeting at an informal dinner of EU leaders on May 23, as well as at the forthcoming NATO and G8 summits.
However, Hollande is unlikely to show much willingness for compromise with Berlin just yet. After all his party is facing legislative elections in mid June and he will want to make sure he is not seen to be backsliding on campaign pledges.
Hollande wants his five-year term to start with his Socialist Party securing control of the National Assembly so that he can push through his agenda. Otherwise he faces a frustrating period of “cohabitation” with a prime minister from the opposing camp, such as occurred when conservative Jacques Chirac’s presidency coincided with the premiership of Socialist Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002.
As such Merkel cannot expect Hollande to veer from his insistence on growth measures. And for all his unassuming manner, he could well prove to be a more difficult partner than Sarkozy in the long run.
Nevertheless Merkel is also likely to stand firm on many issues. Asked on Tuesday night if she feared Hollande’s campaign promises she replied coolly: “I am seldom afraid, as fear is not a good counselor in politics.”
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The message from France and Greece this weekend was clear. Will President Obama and Republicans listen?
By Robert Reich
Socialist Party candidate for the presidential election Francois Hollande delivers a speech during a meeting in Lorient, western France, Monday, April 23, 2012. (Credit: AP/David Vincent)
Who’s an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it’s not for the bond traders.
Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: “When people think about the economy they don’t see it through the dry numbers of the deficit figures, trade balances or inflation forecasts — but instead the things that make the difference between a life that’s worth living and a daily grind that drags them down.”
Cameron, whose own economic policies have worsened the daily grind dragging down most Brits, may be sobered by what happened over the weekend in France and Greece – as well as his own poll numbers. Britain’s conservatives have been taking a beating.
In truth, the choice isn’t simply between budget-cutting austerity, on the one hand, and growth and jobs on the other.
It’s really a question of timing. And it’s the same issue on this side of the pond. If government slices spending too early, when unemployment is high and growth is slowing, it makes the debt situation far worse.
That’s because public spending is a critical component of total demand. If demand is already lagging, spending cuts further slow the economy – and thereby increase the size of the public debt relative to the size of the overall economy.
You end up with the worst of both worlds – a growing ratio of debt to the gross domestic product, coupled with high unemployment and a public that’s furious about losing safety nets when they’re most needed.
The proper sequence is for government to keep spending until jobs and growth are restored, and only then to take out the budget axe.
If Hollande’s new government pushes Angela Merkel in this direction, he’ll end up saving the euro and, ironically, the jobs of many conservative leaders throughout Europe – including Merkel and Cameron.
But he also has an important audience in the United States, where Republicans are trying to sell a toxic blend of trickle-down supply-side economics (tax cuts on the rich and on corporations) and austerity for everyone else (government spending cuts). That’s exactly the opposite of what’s needed now.
Yes, America has a long-term budget deficit that’s scary. So does Europe. But the first priority in America and in Europe must be growth and jobs. That means rejecting austerity economics for now, while at the same time demanding that corporations and the rich pay their fair share of the cost of keeping everyone else afloat.
President Obama and the Democrats should set a clear trigger — say, 6 percent unemployment and two quarters of growth greater than 3 percent — before whacking the budget deficit.
And they should set that trigger now, during the election, so the public can give them a mandate on Election Day to delay the “sequestration” cuts (now scheduled to begin next year) until that trigger is met.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 2:44 PM UTC
With Hollande poised to win the French election, the EU is finally moving away from destructive austerity measures
By Paul Ames, GlobalPost
Socialist Party candidate for the presidential election Francois Hollande(Credit: AP Photo/David Vincent)
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The ground is shifting in Europe’s debt crisis. The edifice of economic austerity built under the guidance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is starting to wobble.
There’s a new buzz in Brussels about pumping hundreds of billions into a Marshall Plan-inspired fund to get Europeans back to work, devaluing the euro to boost exports or sharing out the euro-zone debt burden.
“This generalized austerity is prolonging the crisis. I can’t accept that. We need growth in Europe,” says Francois Hollande, the Socialist leader tipped to win Sunday’s French presidential election.
“With every day that goes by, I have the feeling that my initiative is more and more understood in Europe,” Hollande said in comments posted on his website Monday.
Hollande is enjoying an eight-point lead over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s vote. His expected victory is the main catalyst behind the emerging pro-growth emphasis in Europe, but there are other factors.
Continuing grim economic news — Spain announced Monday that it had sunk into a second recession in just over two years — is fueling doubts that Europe’s three-year dedication to spending cuts and tax hikes may not be the best way to cure the continent’s economic malaise.
“Europe has misdiagnosed its problems in important respects and set the wrong strategic course,” former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers wrote in a column this weekend. “Only if growth is restored can the euro endure and European financial problems be resolved.”
The Spanish newspaper El Pais reported Sunday that the EU was preparing a 200 billion euro “sort of Marshall Plan” to fund infrastructure projects, green energy and advanced technology.
EU spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said Monday that such figures were “highly speculative.” However, the EU is putting together a plan to boost growth for approval at what is expected to be a highly significant summit of European leaders on June 28-29.
Wary that the new focus risks further spooking markets, Ahrenkilde Hansen told reporters that going for growth did not mean a return to slack finances. “We are not talking about an alternative to fiscal consolidation,” she said. “The issue is not either fiscal correction, or growth. We need both.”
The late June EU summit is likely to be Hollande’s first if he succeeds in unseating Sarkozy.
Much has been made of the Socialist leader’s expected clash with Merkel due to his criticism of the fiscal discipline treaty that is the centerpiece of her response to the treaty.
Both Merkel and Hollande in recent days endorsed two of the key pro-growth ideas expected to be on the summit agenda: fast-tracking the use of remaining money from the EU’s budget for developing its poorest regions, which ran at 360 billion euros from 2007-2013, and boosting the firepower of the EU’s lending arm, the European Investment Bank.
EU Economics Commissioner Olli Rehn has suggested that lifting its capital by just 10 billion euros could enable the EIB to leverage lending of 180 billion euros.
Although they have continued to spar in media comments, Hollande and Merkel have been preparing the ground for non-confrontational relationship. There are signs of a softening of the Frenchman’s demand for a renegotiation of the fiscal discipline treaty.
Defeat for Sarkozy would however be a blow for Merkel, who offered unprecedented support for the incumbent in the early stages of the French campaign.
She also risks losing allies elsewhere.
The Dutch government, one of the strongest supporters of Merkel’s insistence on austerity for southern Europe, fell last week over its own budget-cutting plans and will face a stern challenge from the center left and far right in September elections.
Parties on both political extremes are seen profiting from a wave of discontent in Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Greece to find a successor to the technocratic government which has gone along with the tough conditions set by the EU in return for bailout packages.
Adding to the pressure over the past few days, several key players have joined the chorus calling for a growth initiative, including European Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi; top EU financial services official Michel Barnier; and the UN’s International Labor Organization.
“Austerity has, in fact, resulted in weaker economic growth, increased volatility and a worsening of bank’s balance sheets,” said an ILO report released Monday. “It is high time for a move toward a growth- and job-orientated strategy.
Monday, Apr 23, 2012 6:42 PM UTC
France's far-right party leader may help the embattled president win reelection
By Barry Neild, GlobalPost
Marine Le Pen reacts after the first round of French presidential elections on Sunday. (Credit: AP/Jacques Brinon)
LONDON, UK — Campaign strategists for both Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande will be scrambling on Monday to make sense of a first-round presidential vote that left neither with a clear path to victory — and showed a surprise level of support for a far-right candidate.
As many analysts expected, Socialist Hollande scored higher than incumbent Sarkozy in Sunday’s election, but thanks to a surge in the popularity of Marine Le Pen of the anti-immigration National Front party, a easy win is no longer the foregone conclusion that many predicted.
Hollande took 28.8 percent of the vote against Sarkozy’s 26.1 percent, meaning they will face each other in a run-off vote on May 6. But what was expected to be a simple referendum on differing plans to rescue France’s struggling economy has been complicated by Le Pen’s showing of 18.5 percent.
As horse-trading begins for the support of those who voted for the eight lower-polling candidates now eliminated from the race, the problem now facing both Hollande and Sarkozy is how they can capitalize on the far-right turnout.
Some analysts said center-right Sarkozy is most likely to benefit from Le Pen’s success, others argued it could derail him. Meanwhile, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the party his daughter now leads, said the result put the National Front on track for big wins in June parliamentary elections.
Le Pen’s success also raises the possibility that French opinion was swayed by a series of shootings in southern France last month involving a 23-year-old terrorist who claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda. At the time, Le Pen said the incident showed that the “Islamic fundamentalist threat has been underestimated in our country.”
That said, Le Pen has doubtlessly attracted considerable support for her protectionist economic policies and for being the only conservative candidate proposing to take France out of the euro.
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A still from "The Intouchables" 
Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande in Berlin on Tuesday, (Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch) 
