L'Etatisme de Sarko agace l'Allemagne

[Timur]

Angela Merkel inquiète face aux positions françaises sur l'économie.

La chancelière allemande Angela Merkel, à la veille d'un sommet franco-allemand, s'inquiète des positions défendues par la France, notamment en matière de politique industrielle, selon l'édition du magazine économique Wirtschaftswoche à paraître lundi.

Cette question a été évoquée lundi dernier lors d'une réunion entre Angela Merkel, le président du Conseil économique de son parti, l'Union chrétienne-démocrate (CDU), Kurt Lauk, et des hauts-responsables de l'industrie et de l'économie allemande, dont Thomas Enders, co-président allemand du groupe européen d'aéronautique et de défense EADS, Matthias Wissmann, président de la Confédération de l'industrie automobile, et Siegfried Jaschinski, dirigeant de la banque publique régionale du Bade-Wurtemberg.

Un porte-parole de la chancellerie a confirmé samedi à l'AFP qu'une telle réunion avait eu lieu, se refusant toutefois à fournir des détails.

Selon l'hebdomadaire Wirtschaftswoche, la chancellerie allemande, le ministère des Finances et celui de l'Economie sont tous trois critiques des positions françaises, estimant que le président Nicolas Sarkozy et son gouvernement cherchent à affaiblir les efforts de l'Union européenne pour favoriser la concurrence.

Au sommet de l'UE à Bruxelles sur le traité institutionnel, Nicolas Sarkozy avait obtenu l'affadissement du paragraphe consacré à "la libre concurrence" et notamment la disparition de l'expression "concurrence libre et non-faussée" comme objectif de la poltique industrielle et commerciale de l'UE.

Angela Merkel et Nicolas Sarkozy doivent se retrouver lundi à Toulouse, dans le sud-ouest de la France, pour discuter notamment de la stratégie et de la direction future du groupe européen EADS, maison-mère d'Airbus.

Berlin est également agacé par la volonté du chef de l'Etat français de se mêler de la politique monétaire européenne, au mépris de l'indépendance de la Banque centrale européenne (BCE), afin de faire baisser un euro qu'il juge "trop fort".

La France, d'après Wirtschaftswoche, voudrait obtenir de la BCE une plus grande flexibilité en matière de politique monétaire et chercherait à contourner ses obligations communautaires en matière de réformes budgétaires.

"Nous devons nous assurer qu'il y a réciprocité dans nos relations avec la France et devons réagir de la même façon", a estimé Kurt Lauk, cité par le magazine. L'Allemagne, contrairement à la France, "ne doit pas rendre hommage au mercantilisme ou au protectionnisme étatique", a-t-il ajouté.

Selon M. Lauk, "quand en Allemagne, l'Etat, avec raison, s'occupe moins de politique industrielle, ce n'est pas pour qu'un autre Etat s'engouffre dans la brèche".

Le dirigeant de l'institut de conjoncture allemand le plus influent, Hans-Werner Sinn, avait également fustigé vendredi dernier l'interventionnisme français, affirmant qu'il fallait y "mettre des limites". La France "mène depuis toujours une politique interventionniste en faveur de ses entreprises" et "au détriment d'autres pays", avait affirmé le responsable de l'institut Ifo au magazine spécialisé VDI Nachrichten, publication de la Fédération allemande des ingénieurs.

"Nous avons besoin de règles de l'Union européenne qui mettent des limites, qui signalent qu'on ne doit pas intervenir mais laisser faire le marché", avait souligné M. Sinn.

[A.B.]

La France "mène depuis toujours une politique interventionniste en faveur de ses entreprises" et "au détriment d'autres pays"

Gnii. Avec des arguments comme ça on se passerait bien de défenseurs.

[Nick de Cusa]

Ca proteste toujours contre les conneries de Sarko, outre Rhin.

BDI warns on ‘economic patriotism’

By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin

Published: July 31 2007 22:12 | Last updated: August 1 2007 08:34

Germany’s leading industry lobbyist warned Berlin on Tuesday not to follow France’s lead in raising the state’s influence on the economy in response to the challenges of globalisation.

Jürgen Thumann, the chairman of the BDI industry federation, told the FT in an interview the “economic patriotism” championed by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, was among the factors fuelling a protectionist zeitgeist in Europe.

“This zeitgeist exists. But I do not have to follow the zeitgeist. On the contrary, it encourages me even more to fight the temptation of protectionist measures.”

“We cannot on the one hand call for the liberalisation and deregulation of European energy markets while on the other hand granting France an exemption,” Mr Thumann said, alluding to EDF, France’s state-owned electricity utility, which enjoys a monopoly at home but has been acquisitive abroad.

Mr Sarkozy’s protectionist tone, his hands-on industry policy and his free-riding foreign policy moves have ruffled feathers in Berlin. German officials this week called his offer, last week, to provide up to three nuclear reactors to Libya “immoral”.

Yet the challenges of globalisation, which inspires as much fear in the German public as in the French, have led to contradictions.

That was illustrated by Mr Thumann’s endorsement of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plans to shield industry from investments by cash-rich foreign governments, raising the likelihood of a decision on erecting such protective measures next month.

Mr Thumann said the government should set up a mechanism modelled on the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which vets foreign acquisitions of potentially strategic US assets.

Business leaders have had difficulties squaring their calls for state protection against unwelcome investors with their rejection of protectionism in principle.

Mr Thumann, whose family business, Heitkamp & Thumann Group, controls more than 50 per cent of the world market for battery components, is keenly aware of the importance of open markets to Germany’s powerful export-led recovery.

“We support the free movement of capital and oppose all barriers to investment. Our motto is: no protectionism,” he says.

“The only thing I’m saying is that when state funds, for example from Russia and China but not only from these countries, seek to invest in key industries or companies in Germany and other countries, then I can understand that the government sees a certain need for control.”

Mr Thumann is less preoccupied with potential threats to national security and more concerned about foreign states siphoning off know-how and patents.

“We cannot rule out the possibility that states may have other interests than private investors and do not follow the rules of the market,” he says.

Flushed with currencies from their booming exports, China, Russia and other emerging countries have created state-controlled funds holding an estimated $2,500bn (€1,800bn, £1,200bn), according to Morgan Stanley. The danger, Mr Thumann says, is that while private-sector investors seek high returns, states are guided by political motives.

Politicians have focused on the risks posed by sovereign wealth funds. But Mr Thumann says state-owned companies are equally problematic. A large German investment by Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas giant, would be acceptable only “as long as we are convinced that Gazprom acts like a company and is being managed as a company and not exclusively and directly as an instrument of the Russian government”.

The “universe” of sectors that enjoy protection should “be kept small” and should not include banks or even energy companies. “What should be clear is that we are not talking about industrial policies à la française.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f055611a-3f99-11dc…00779fd2ac.html

[LaFéeC]

Il va finir par s'attirer les foudres de tous nos voisins !

[Ronnie Hayek]

Mais sa vengeance sera terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible ! Hîn, hîn, hîn !

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/searc…parodie_extreme

[Etienne]

Mais sa vengeance sera terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrible ! Hîn, hîn, hîn !

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/searc…parodie_extreme

J'ai eu peur que ton lien ne pointe sur ceci : http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=0VeTFl3u_Yc

[Nick de Cusa]

Il va finir par s'attirer les foudres de tous nos voisins !

"Sarko est dangereux", c'est ce que déclare aujourd'hui dans De Tijd (quotidien de la finance en Flandres) un M. Johan van Overtveldt, directeur général de l'organisation patronale VKW.

Il commence par lui reconnaître du mérite sur les réformes fiscales et du travail, et le trouve prometteur sur la réforme des universités (moi pas).

Par contre, il le juge dangereux sur les déficits publics, le fait qu'il ne croit pas à l'économie de marché et au libre échange (cf. modification du traité constit'), et bien sûr sur ses attaques contre l'indépendance de la BCE.

[Cochon]

Il va finir par s'attirer les foudres de tous nos voisins !

Bah, ça ne changera pas trop de Chirac. La rupture, oui, mais sans trop de changements de préférence

[Nick de Cusa]

Pendant ce temps là au Royaume Uni:

Mr Sarkozy’s record of protectionism and favouring national champions seems worrying for foreign businesses. Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, openly attacked Mr Sarkozy’s brand of “economic patriotism” as “nonsense”.

(Financial Times).

[José]

What Sarkozy Won't Change

By George F. Will

Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page B07

PARIS -- French libraries are said to file their nation's constitutions -- there have been more than a dozen since 1789; the current one is a relatively ancient 49 years old -- under periodicals. Now Nicolas Sarkozy, France's peripatetic new president, has created a commission on constitutional reform. The commission includes Jack Lang, who, as minister of culture in 1983 under President Francois Mitterrand, staged a sublimely unserious conference on the (supposed) world economic crisis, featuring the likes of Sophia Loren, Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.

Is Sarkozy a serious man? Some American conservatives consider him a kindred spirit and think they see in his election a heartening portent of their coming revival: He succeeded an intensely unpopular two-term president of his own party (Jacques Chirac) by promising bold reforms. Perhaps.

But Guy Sorman, a conservative writer who has known Sarkozy in politics and, he says, as a friend for 30 years, believes that like most politicians the president is not a man of culture and ideas, but unlike most French politicians "he does not pretend to be." He is, Sorman says, a "Keynesian" -- a believer in using government to regulate the economy by managing demand -- "who doesn't know who Keynes was."

Sarkozy does know of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, who was one of Margaret Thatcher's intellectual heroes. Sarkozy has, however, said, "I don't wake up every morning asking what Hayek or Adam Smith would have done." That is, unfortunately, obvious. A fountain of suspiciously opaque formulations (he advocates "regulated liberalism" and "humane globalization"), he is pleased that "the word 'protection' is no longer taboo." (When was it ever taboo in France?) He is committed to continuing protections of the most cosseted French faction, the farmers. When calling for a "genuine European industrial policy," he asks: "Competition as an ideology, as a dogma, what has it done for Europe?" Worse, he wants to curtail the independence of -- that is, politicize -- the one institution that can save France from itself, the European Central Bank, which can restrain France's ruinous preferences for a loose monetary policy and inflation as slow-motion repudiation of debt.

In Sarkozy's book "Testimony," he notes that 30 years ago Britain had a gross domestic product 25 percent lower than that of France. Now Britain's is 10 percent higher. What happened? Margaret Thatcher did. But although Sarkozy vows a "rupture" with the past, he is not bold enough to affirm an affinity with her and to seriously challenge the consensus at the root of France's social sclerosis: Both left and right reject economic liberalism, the left because of its regnant socialism, the right because it regards statism as a prerequisite for national greatness.

France's unemployment rate has not been below 8 percent in 25 years -- not since 1982, when Francois Mitterrand inadvertently did what Thatcher intentionally did: killed socialism. Elected president in 1981 promising a "rupture with capitalism," he kept that promise pitilessly. He had the broadest program of nationalizations ever proposed for a free economy; he increased pensions, family allowances, housing allowances and the minimum wage. The franc was devalued three times, and soon he was forced to adopt "socialist rigor" (austerity).

French leftism is perfectly reactionary. Wielding a word with semi-sacred connotations in France, socialists say they are "the resistance." They are not for anything; they are against surrendering any of their entitlements. They stand against three menaces. One is "neoliberalism" -- markets supplanting the state as the primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. The second is the Americanization of culture by imports of American entertainments (see the third). The third is globalization (see the first and second).

In May, in an election with the highest turnout (85 percent) since 1981, Sarkozy's socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, a princess of vagueness, won 47 percent of the vote for, essentially, "resistance." Remarkably, she defeated Sarkozy among voters ages 18 to 59 -- the working population. It does not bode well for reform that he won by winning huge majorities among those most dependent on the welfare state -- 61 percent among those 60 to 69, and 68 percent among those over 70.

One in four French workers is employed in the public sector, which devours 54 percent of GDP. (The U.S. percentage is about 34.) The fact that for 15 years France's GDP and output per hour worked have been declining relative to those of Britain and the United States surely is related to the fact that 60 percent of the French respond positively to the word "bureaucrat." American conservatives should seek happy harbingers elsewhere.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte…7082401971.html

[h16]

French libraries are said to file their nation's constitutions -- there have been more than a dozen since 1789; the current one is a relatively ancient 49 years old -- under periodicals.

Mouahahahahahah