| No. But it's lovely the journalist gets invited to dine with such elite company. |
[NY Times] Is François Hollande more like Mariano Rajoy or Mario Monti? In other words, is the French socialist president condemned to be always behind the curve with reform, as the conservative Spanish prime minister is? Or can he get ahead of it, as the technocratic Italian premier has?
I put this question to my fellow guests at a dinner in Gay Paree last week. La Belle France is not at imminent risk of blowing up, as wrongly implied by the British magazine The Economist, with its latest dramatic front cover showing baguettes tied together like sticks of dynamite with a lighted fuse. It is a much richer country than Spain. And its people are more willing to pay their taxes than are the Italians. French 10-year borrowing costs are only 2.1 percent, compared with Italia's 4.9 percent and Spain's 5.9 percent. |