Since he began his career 35 years ago, self-described leftist, philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy has never been caught without a cause or opinion. He has flamboyantly articulated these in more than 30 books (including the much discussed “American Vertigo”), countless television appearances, articles and even films that he’s written, produced, directed and/or narrated. Lévy is a kind of intellectual Robin Hood, going where there is totalitarianism and/or war. He has been a passionate advocate of Bosnia, smuggled himself into Darfur to report on the Sudanese genocide and followed the perilous trail of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl into Pakistan to write the New York Times bestseller “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?”
Lévy is a showman — his narcissism is legendary — which adds fuel to the fire of his critics, who accuse him of lacking original ideas. Known in France as BHL, Lévy is his own wildly successful brand. He wears the mantle of polarizing intellectual quite happily along with made-to-measure clothing from French house Charvet, which also made shirts for JFK and Marcel Proust. He was recently quoted in the New York Times’ T Magazine men’s fall fashion supplement saying he had no interest in his bespoke apparel or even talking about it — though he had clearly agreed to this fashion profile, which was set in Bosnia, where he was screening two documentaries he had shot there and attending a children’s festival partly financed by his family foundation.
At home in France, Lévy is treated as something of a god (which is not lost on him), known for his good looks and family wealth as much as for his intellectual output. It doesn’t hurt his glamorous profile that he is married to provocative actress and singer Arielle Dombasle, who is sometimes uncharitably compared to a Barbie doll. The couple share an apartment with a chic address on the Left Bank, a house in the South of France and a Marrakech palace.
Lévy’s latest literary publicity blitz coincides with the publication of his newest book, “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism.”
When Levy wrote “Barbarism With a Human Face” 31 years ago, his sworn enemy — the barbarism he spoke of — was Marxism. In the new book, the author has focused on his own intellectual autobiography, examining his ideological and political history and identity. He believes a segment of his political family (the left) is being led astray and he rakes his extended kin over the coals for becoming too tolerant — especially on issues like Islamic radicalism — and letting their anti-imperialistic attitudes and loathing of America cloud their vision and damage their democratic values. He is unusual in French terms, because he’s pro-American when a lot of Europeans think the U.S. behaves like it owns the world. Lévy has a fondness and understanding of American culture. He gets us, and attempted to prove it in “American Vertigo,” his report on the state of the USA.
Lévy answers the door to his Paris apartment himself, a tall, lanky man wearing his signature white shirt, unbuttoned almost to the navel, underneath a sleek suit. In his large, blond-wood-paneled office, there is an enormous metal sculpture of a man’s head with a panel opening half of it. Inside, the figure is empty — the complete opposite of the man who owns him.
The subtitle of your new book is “A Stand Against the New Barbarism.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
What I mean by the new barbarism is great ideas having bad effects. Great ideals turning out to be the stem cell of big crimes, big injustices, unfairnesses, brutality and so on. The barbarism 30 years ago when I wrote “Barbarism With a Human Face” was Marxism, which pretended to be a fight in favor of justice, social equality, freedom, eradication of slavery, and which was exactly the contrary. And you have today a new barbarism in the case of these women and men who pretend to fight in favor of tolerance, in favor of anti-imperialism, in favor of anti-colonialism, and actually plead for slavery of the women, massive violation of human rights. Or when they don’t plead for that, they tolerate them, refuse to denounce them.
You have a new mechanism today … for example, where in the name of anti-Americanism the crimes in Darfur are not denounced. The crimes in Bosnia were accepted. And so many wars in Africa or elsewhere are just forgotten.
Are there specific kinds of people you’re talking about?
Those, for example, who pretend to be anti-mondialist … I don’t know if you have this in America? Anti-mondialists fight against globalization. Anti-globalization … They are the dark side of the left of today.
Now, in my family, which is the left progressive camp — in this family, I observe that there is a tendency which can reach the same results … the same blindness of the right. The same indifference to the real suffering of the real people, and so on and so on.
So you are saying that you believe the left can end up committing the same sins as the right? Because I think in the United States we have been fighting for tolerance in so many ways — tolerance for gays, civil rights …
These battles, of course, you fought. I fought … And it is won. It is achieved. Barack Obama being a candidate for the presidency and maybe — I hope — elected means that the fight is won, more or less. Frankly a country where racism is sued in front of lawyers, a country where the women won the power of preventing discrimination and so on, this is great. This is a huge cultural revolution, which America led.
But in the name of tolerance there can be also some crimes — not committed but veiled … For example, those who tell us that we have to be tolerant of the radical Islamist movements. Those who tell us that being tolerant means trying to understand their reasons and their justifications. Those who tell us that, about women, to veil the face of a woman is just a customary habit, which we Westerners are not allowed to judge according to the standard of human rights. This is a very bad thing.
This idea that every habit should be respected, every custom should be accepted because it belongs to a whole and that if we take a piece, we break the whole — this is one of the counter-effects of tolerance. And you have in America a lot of people who said, why should you ask the Indian people to resign the pattern of the castes that belong to their culture? Why should you oblige this or that tribe, people in Africa, to resign the excision of the clitoris of the little girl? It belongs to their culture …
You framed the new book around your telling Nicolas Sarkozy that you would not support or vote for him for president. Even though you two had been friends for 25 years, you told him in a phone call that you’d never voted for the right, and you had no intention of changing that. What is your relationship with Sarkozy now?
I don’t know. I did not see him again since the book … He does not believe in ideas, so he does not understand somebody who was a sort of buddy — I would not say a friend but a buddy — not to vote in favor of him. He still did not understand, I think, so he interprets these sorts of stories in terms of betrayal, fidelity. I don’t believe in that. The only fidelity you have to have is to ideas, truth, and there are some circumstances when an intellectual has a duty of infidelity — if he’s a friend, and if you are against his ideas.
What does it mean to be a leftist? Does it mean to be faithful to a family, whatever the family does? Whatever the family says? I don’t think so. There is a duty of unfaithfulness also to the family in question — to the left when the left is embodied by Noam Chomsky, or when it is embodied by Naomi Klein.
Would you define for an American audience what you mean by a leftist? I’d like to try and get at what the difference is between someone on the left in Europe and the U.S.
In the two countries, I think it is the same definition: to have freedom and equality, the two dreams of freedom and equality walking at the same pace. To refuse to choose between the two. This is written in the motto of the French Republic, as you know, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” And it is also written in the DNA of the best of America. The real dream of equality, which fed the battle, for example, for the civil rights, Martin Luther King and so on, and the battle for individual freedom. Those who ask to choose between the two — if you have freedom you do not have equality, if you have equality, you do not have freedom — for me, they are not leftist. This is a good definition of the left.
If there were three main differences between the left and the right, right now, what would you say they are?
To believe or not to believe that equality and freedom can be combined, as I told you, is one difference. [Another is] to believe or not to believe in politics. A classical rightist or leftist-rightist does not believe in politics; he believes in the invisible hand of the market in one case, of history in the other case — the invisible hand being able, herself and alone, to promote the change and the reform and so on. For me, a leftist is somebody who believes a democracy has to be built with time, patience, real meaning and so on.
And the third difference for me is not to choose the victims. When you are a rightist, you decide, for example, that you have some privileged blood baths, some privileged wars of which you take care and others of which you don’t take care. You also have some people in the so-called left who [do that] — for example … Kosovo. You had a racist, neo-Fascist dictator [there], Milošević. You had a civil population guilty of nothing, which was displaced, raped, killed and so on. And you had some people who, because America was against Milošević, decided to be in favor of Milošević and against the American intervention to stop the thing, and so on and so on. This is the false left.
In this book, you write, “Since the French Revolution, the word ‘revolution,’ the pure signifier, was, in France at least, the most serious political dividing line. The Left wanted it; the Right feared it.” What is the state of revolution in the world right now?
It depends on what you mean by revolution. If you mean by revolution the dream which was on the top of the clock when I was 20 years old [in the 1960s], I hope this dream is over — the dream of rebeginning the human gender. To remake it. To remold it completely … This was the old way of being a revolutionary.
Now, if you mean by revolution changing the world in favor of the have-nots, of the less gifted, and so on — if you mean by revolution, more and more democracy and liberal democracy and not to choose between liberty, freedom and equality, this is still going on. Not enough. I hope it will be more.
I think that if Obama is elected, it will be a revolution in the United States.
In a way, you can understand it like this. I am in favor of that myself. I hope, if I could pray I would pray, for Obama being elected.
Why do Europeans love Obama?
I don’t know. I can’t tell you why. I don’t love him, by the way. I wish him to be elected. It’s not a question of love or hate … This is not the best way to make politics.
Why Obama should be chosen, in my opinion: No. 1, because it would mean really the end — and the complete victory of the battle begun in the ’60s. No. 2, because it will mean the end of a new American evil, which is the dividing, the Balkanization of American society. This is another counter-effect of a great idea, which was tolerance. You so much tolerate that you tolerate the American society to be in separate bubbles having their own peculiarities, and so on. Obama as president will mean all these bubbles submitted to a real ideal of citizenship. This is his message. McCain will not be able to do this. If McCain is elected, I can tell you the Iranians will close themselves in the Iranian identity. The Arabs will coldly, freezingly imprison themselves in the Muslim identity. The African-Americans will believe that the American society is more and more built against them. You will have an increase of the Balkanization.
And No. 3, you have another ideal in the America of today, which I call the competition of victims. Competition of memories. If you are in favor of the Jews, you cannot be in favor of the blacks. If you remember the suffering of slavery, you cannot remember too much the suffering of the Holocaust, and so on and so on. The human heart has not space enough for all the sufferings. This is what some people say. Obama says the contrary. It will mean the end of this stupid topic, which is competition of victimhood.
If McCain is elected, then how will the world react?
The only way America can get out of the current crisis is a minimum of welfare state, of a Rooseveltian New Deal. It will not be tax cuts and so on … So America will react badly. The world will react also badly. McCain may not be a bad guy, but he will mean — his victory will mean — the revenge, freezing, frightened, shy, rear-guard America. Rear guard. Not vanguard. Not victorious. Not optimist America.
A lot of Americans do not understand why it even matters what the rest of the world thinks about who the American president is.
Because you are the most important, the most powerful country in the world. But don’t be too narcissistic, you Americans. Everything matters to everybody. The next president of Iran matters to everybody. Who is president matters to everybody. Who presides over one of the most little states in the world, which is Israel, matters to everybody. The entire world matters. Even more little — Gaza. Hamas or not Hamas? Everybody has the eyes on that. So it is a principle, a rule in this time of globalization: Everything matters to everybody.
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) 
