Wednesday, January 30, 2013

French Labor Minister: France is “Totally Bankrupt”

ECB’s Mario Draghi in self congratulatory mode recently said that worst days of the Euro may have diminished
 
From Bloomberg,
We can begin 2013 on a more confident note, precisely because significant progress was made during 2012,” Draghi said in a speech in Frankfurt late yesterday. “The darkest clouds over the euro area subsided. Europe’s leaders recognized that monetary union needs to be complemented by a financial union, a fiscal union, a genuine economic union and eventually a deeper political union.”
Well, if French politics should serve as an anchor, today may represent the proverbial calm before the storm 

Senior French politicians have been forced to defend the state of the country’s economy after Labor Minister Michel Sapin set off a storm of controversy by claiming France was “totally bankrupt”.

Sapin made the remarks in a radio interview on Jan. 27 after he was asked about Former Prime Minister Francois Fillon comment in September 2007 that France was a “bankrupt state.” Sapin responded, “But it’s a totally bankrupt state,” adding “that’s the reason we have to put deficit- reductions programs in place.”

The minister immediately took back the statement, saying he was being “ironic.”
This rereverberates with the recent public relations faux pas by Japan's finance minister who likewise stirred a tempest by asking old people to "hurry up and die"

More signs of the growing fractures in the entropic welfare state.

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