Word: mitterrand
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...against French "tourists" seeking to smuggle capital out of the country. By week's end, as the initial shock wore off, both the Bourse and the franc were showing signs of recovery. But pessimists saw the "Black Monday" fiasco as just a sample of what might come if Mitterrand attempts to carry out his programs...
...context of France's already heavily mixed economy, Mitterrand's nationalization plans are not all that radical. He would increase the proportion of nationalized banking activity from 60% to 100%, while jacking up the share of public sector industry from 12% to about 17%. This would bring 700,000 additional workers under government control. But, in fact, the companies in question are already largely controlled by France's state-directed economy. Many of the companies scheduled for nationalization are now faltering anyway and in need of some kind of government support. Moreover, some of France...
...real criticism of Mitterrand's economic program is not so much that it will precipitate disaster; it is rather that the whole concept of nationalization and Keynesian government intervention seems to belong to an outmoded 1960s-style of economic tinkering that has failed wherever it has been tried. Mitterrand seems to be marching to a distant and offbeat drummer and in the wrong direction. "This [nationalization] project," writes Historian Raymond Aron, "bears witness to the Socialist Party's archaic ideas." Says a prominent French banker: "The French don't do anything like other people. At the moment...
Even an economic official of Bonn's Social Democratic government, whose postal and transportation services plus a part of the banking and steel industries are nationalized, doubts the wisdom of Mitterrand's plans. "It's wrong to assume that the state can run a business any better than it could be run under the free enterprise system," he says. "Various lands have tried it-Belgium, Sweden and Great Britain, for example-and they haven't managed to make a good thing of it. France should be no different...
...When Mitterrand officially takes over power from Giscard on May 21, his first act as President will be to select a Premier from a number of candidates. The new President and his Premier will then name a Cabinet, which will function as a "transitional" government. Mitterrand has stated that this first Cabinet will consist of "those who have supported" him -which Socialists say excludes the Communists, whose backing did not come until the second round...