President Francois Hollande Announced the Dissolution of the French Government: A Political “Croque-Monsieur”… or “Quick Fix”!
I presume that many of you have been to France, especially Paris, where if you were in a hurry to get a ‘quick bite’, you would have ordered what the French call a ‘Croque Monsieur’. Unlike the “Big Mac” which is primarily constructed on the foundations of discarded flesh parcels, often identified as “hamburger”, the Croque Monsieur is made of grilled cheese and ham. Usually the most common form of cheese is “Gruyere” or “Emmental”.
Why so much attention to such a minute subject like the French sandwich? I have chosen the ‘Croque Monsieur’ to represent several different financial, political and cultural factors in the French Socialist System.
One simple statement from the Arnaud Montebourg, the French Minister of Economy forced Hollande to fire him and the rest of his government. I am sure you would love to know what the sentence was that caused such a stir…and here it is “France is the eurozone’s second-biggest economy, the world’s fifth-greatest power, and it does not intend to align itself with excessive obsessions of Germany’s conservatives” [ thank George Friedman of Stratfor, August 25, 2014 for that quote].
Like the Croque-Monsieur this sentence seemed pretty basic. France would not accept the diktats of Germany’s financial auditors. However, this sentence was the ‘shot heard around the EU’ [sorry for the mixed metaphor]; wherein France is really expressing its basic discontent, discomfort and mistrust of the Germans. Clearly, this confrontational attitude is not new to France nor to Germany. In this particular case, what the French Finance Minister basically stated was that France is in serious economic trouble and cannot comply with the more ‘conservative’ [read ‘rational’] demands of the Frankfurt Central Bank for France to reign in it’s spending and eventually dissolve it’s socialist structure of government.
For us greedy Capitalists on this side of the ocean, we are not really surprised that Germany has been carrying France and the rest of ‘dead beat nations’ of Europe, including Italy, Spain, Portugal for a very long time and really has no further desire to continue to be the ‘economic engine’ of Europe. One year ago, I mentioned in one of my blogs that Angela Merkel had warned the EU that it could not and would not maintain a minimum growth rate that could support the rest of the EU. She clearly stated that Germany’s 2-5 % growth would slow down considerably.
Now the future has become the present. The French Government has a hard time coming to terms with the reality of its failed Socialist Economy where taxes are prohibitive and earnings are standardized for all workers. Let us not forget that any entrepreneurial company has very limited ability to fire inept or lazy workers because of the restrictive French Labor Laws.
What is left for France?
Very little, in fact.
France should emulate the now defunct Italian state and declare itself as a “failed state converted to a national museum”—to be visited by tourists and food connoisseurs who like it’s cheeses and wines… and fois de gras! From an economic point of view, I humbly attest to three important French contributions which may be exported:
Nuclear plants; bottled water [maybe even Yogurt]; and rail road trains and engines.
That’s about it.
As for the French youth who have graduated from the elite French training academies, I suggest that the USA make a concerted effort to recruit these talented individuals to come to the USA and become valued citizens. They are perhaps the most efficient and most valued high frequency traders on Wall Street. In terms of electronics, mathematics and engineering, the French elite stand out and should have a place in the USA.
As for the Airbus, I loved being a passenger on it [Lufthansa 380 Airbus, cheaper than Air France] but as a viable commercial airline, I don’t think it can ever compete effectively against the Boeing 777 or 787, which is more economical and less burdensome to maintain and clear at the airport gates.
What we have left in France is the Croque Monsieur which is extremely filling if you are not eager to eat a full course meal….. and, you are in a hurry. I am afraid that France better wake up and realize that it is in the process of becoming a major failed European State!!! Socialism was an interesting concept on paper, but it really had no basis in reality. Man’s greed will always dominate his increasing appetites for more and more. Unfortunately, France offers less and less.
C’est Dommage!! It’s a pity.
Tant Pis! Too bad!!!
Since the dawn of the industrial revolution no one could compete with German industry. Before the Great War French automobile manufacturers couldn't make their own parts and had to obtain them from the German factories in the Ruhr, that part of western Germany not far from France.
ReplyDeleteGermany survives by exporting everything from electronics and automobiles to capital equipment and those huge machines that bore out round tunnels underground so that governments can built secret cities under the earth....and of course PENCILS. Faber-Castell of Neurenburg is the world's largest maker of pencils...all still made in Germany and not in China.....
Unlike the French, English, Americans and Italians, etc....
German companies don't make a damn thing in China!
To a German the WHOLE FUCKING POINT of having a company licensed as a corporation by the country....
Is to act in benefit of the country as a whole and not just the greedy speculator shareholders or the managers or owners....
That's why no one can compete with the Germans, and they make all their money from exporting the best made products anywhere....
And the biggest buyers of everything they have are the Chinese...with whom the Germans have a trade surplus instead of a deficit...
FUCKING AMAZING.
TY! your insights are always valuable.
DeleteAnd by the way....
ReplyDeleteEvery German corporation has to have representative of the laborers or workers on the board. They have no equity in the company but they must sit on the board...that is the LAW.
Try that on for size Americans.
If there was a "Like" option below your postings it would be nice sometimes...like now. Excellent point.
DeleteNow because Germany is such a huge exporter....
ReplyDeleteBeing in the Euro is a huge advantage to them because without the Euro everything would be more expensive for the Italians, French, Portuguese, etc..to buy.
Before the Euro all these other countries would run deficits versus the German Deutchmark and then it would become overvalued and then German products would be more expensive...
But with the Euro there is no overvaluation issue and German products stay at the same affordable prices NO MATTER HOW MUCH OF THEM THE OTHER MEMBERS BUY...
Now that's why the Euro is tremendously advantageous to the Germans...
And why Germany is the winner in this scheme, which has provided a level currency playing field in which everyone can compete equally and therefore the Germans outcompete everyone else...particularly the French with their horrible class system of society, class struggle, aristocrats and working people battling it out and never cooperating....organized crime running everything like in Italy for God's sake.....and the left countering this by setting up not only a communist system but....
ALLOWING EVERY KIND OF FOREIGN SCUM INTO THEIR COUNTRY IN THE NAME OF INCLUSION AND MULTI-CULTURALISM....
And this is what's ruined France.
You see in France they buy all their good shit from Germany and all their cheap shit from China....
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing left for the French to make.
In Italy there is much more innovation and engineering talent and manufacturing in Italy is second to none....
Italy makes the best boats, yachts, sportscars, airplanes like the Piaggio, and motorcycles....
It's only the political plutocratic class in Italy that fucks it up and the communists there who allow the far right and plutocrats to find support because everyone is running from the communists....
But they have the best engineers for certain thing while the French...well....
They don't strive at all because no matter how bad thing get they always think they've already arrived and that they are somehow better than everyone else and always will be...
HUBRIS.
The reason why I drive ONLY MERCEDES is because it's the only car in the world that never has to have it's timing chain replaced because it never wears out and you don't have to worry about it breaking and ruining all your valves like what happened to me with volvos, etc....even BMWs.....
ReplyDeleteWhen i found out that the "mercedes timing chain never requires replacement...."
That's when I yelled, "Yippie!!" No timing chains to break anymore !!
I would give anything right now for a hot pracutto ham and provalone paninni sandwich.!!
ReplyDeleteHot Italian sandwiches are so much better than the French ones....like everything else...but Italians do still buy a lot of French cars believe it or not because they are CHEAP and really not that badly made. The Renault is a big seller in Italy.
Wow! How do you attempt to follow that!!!? Great commentary again MIT again! I watched a documentary about the German standard of living compared to the British standard and it highlighted that very pencil factory! And its great pay and conditions! Same has happened to "great Britain" as in France and wherever! Don't make anything anymore! Import from the far east and put up with low quality! A slight aside but kind of relevant is here in Britain we pay top dollar to watch soccer which most top clubs are run by "foreign" billionaires whilst in Germany where the quality of the players are at least as equally high its at least half the admission price and the clubs are run on a 51/49% owner supporter basis!!! Yeah the Germans have it right! MIT I love Mercedes and put them above a Bugatti! But I also like the Audi! A true display of Teutonic understatement! Funny about the motorcycles too! We British weren't bad once over making them but that went ad well
DeleteThe English upper class never gave a shit about those beneath them and there has never been any nationalistic unity there. People of different classes don't have anything in common and don't care about what happens. Yet the working class can't get enough of reading about the lives of the royals and the rich and famous....
DeleteBut because industry is so hollow now in the UK to support services the debt has soared to stratospheric levels which can never be repaid....
England is in a lot of long term trouble economically and I don't think there is any hope for a career there except for dealing in drugs or prostitution.....
England is the cocaine capital of the world today.
I have a solution for England!
DeleteA new party should be formed of nativists...people whose ancestors lived there for thousands of years...
And those people should point out that the royals are all foreigners...and have been since 1066.
The native English should take their country back from the foreign royals, and make a nation based on their particular talents and their unity and charity for each other....
The real English are the English, the Welsch, and the Scotts...and not the Angles, Saxons, Celts, Normans and others who invaded and brought about exploitation of the native people, stole their land and imposed CLASS DIVISION which persists til today.
And then these same people exported this way of exploitation to the Irish and that's never ended.
With all of Obama's shifting of wealth in the USA, the French will probably find themselves right at home with Obama's "Hope and Change" socialist agenda.
ReplyDeleteParis... incredibly enchanting place, where I travelled during the 1 year anniversary of 9/11 thinking security would be "tight", because of the way some Americans erroneously think in regards to terrorism, i.e. that terrorists have no imagination, and if there would be another event it would be "just like the one that preceded it", which is laughable.
Anyway I didn't get out of LAX airport without a thorough interview and search of my over packed luggage by no less than 6 security officers. The aerosolized ammonium nitrate - the fertilizer from the golf course across from my home set off every chemical alarm imaginable. Security was convinced they had caught Osama Bin Laden himself trying to smuggle an Exocet missile "across the pond". Security ripped my luggage apart and searched everything a half dozen times before they finally realized their was nothing to worry about.
I found that the younger generation in France was pretty friendly and helpful, but the older generation well, they don't like American's for some reason. I'm not sure what that is all about? Mit maybe you can enlighten me on this? I asked this one older guy near Paris in french, if he "spoke any english?" I wanted to get some directions, and he answers in perfect english " No I don't speak any english!" He wouldn't speak another word.
I missed a leg in my journey prior to visiting Paris however, while in London near Heathrow airport, and couldn't synchronize the rest of my trip with any plane or train, so I loaded a rented Mercedes onto a Ferry boat to cross the English Channel; from the White Cliffs of Dover, landed in Calais at about 9:30pm and headed for Paris. Was going in circles till about 11pm around Paris, and assured my then wife who asked "are you lost", that "of course I wasn't lost". Typical male. How could I be lost, its dark, I have jet lag, I'm in a foreign country, and I don't speak a word of French, but "no I'm not lost" ; / Lol.
Anyway I managed to pull off the freeway, in a very seedy part of France, went down this dark alley with a beautiful Mercedes, past the drug dealers, and just as I assured my then wife, I would find a taxi cab, pull out my english french pocket dictionary and ask to follow the taxi cab driver to the Hotel La Defense. And from my lips to God's ears, it happened just like that, to my surprise, and relief.
Florence was amazing, carried our very heavy luggage up the hill to the hotel, again about 11pm, got quite the cardio work out, and having made it to the top of the hill I was greeted by a beautiful young Italian lady at the front desk, with a "Mona Lisa" smile. Which of course being curious, I had to ask her "what was so funny?" She responded in broken English and asked "You non't see the ele-vator?" I saw then saw the humor of the situation as I wiped the sweat from my brow.
ReplyDeleteThe political intrigue surrounding The House of Medici, The Medici Bank, along with the four Popes they helped produce, was fascinating. And walking amongst the birthplace of the Italian renaissance where some of the greatest artists lived and worked and seeing some of that art, was just fantastic.
ReplyDeleteIt is said that; "the Renaissance contributed to the development of the conventions of diplomacy and in science an increased reliance on observation". Causing some historians to argue that; "this intellectual transformation was a bridge between the Middle Ages and Modern History".
ReplyDeleteI would have loved to have stood in the Duomo in Florence where the Medici's once stood during that time just to watch the "goings on". The dome was the largest in the world when it was completed in 1436. The construction of this "main church" of Florence, was begun 140 years (in 1296) before its completion. "It remains the largest brick dome ever constructed".
Thank you Filippo Brunelleschi ! ( and wiki). : )
However, I would not have wanted to have been there between 1347-1350 when the "Black Death" struck particularly hard among urban populations including the city of Florence which is considered one of the "jewels of the Italian peninsula". It has been stated that Florence lost between forty-five and a shocking seventy-five percent of their population.
DeleteIt was amazing to stand in a building with such rich history.
This plague caused the breakdown of social order, much like we see with what is happening with Africa and the ebola virus. It changed the way Florentine citizens behaved, especially when many concluded that their "faith and humble supplications, rendered not once but many times to God by pious people failed to affect change". (Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron.) Faith was no more a safeguard than any of the other methods employed by Florentine citizens. Some abstained from rich food and drink in an effort to stay healthy, others gave in to gluttony of all sorts, and others with the ability to do so fled the city.
"The deathbed vigil which was customary prior to the arrival of the pestilence also allowed for a dying man to make his wishes known; when a person lies upon their death bed, their wishes carry more weight than at any other time". At this time in history we see a loss of this custom, out of fear of infection.
DeleteAccording to the "social mores of the time, death was a social occasion, a spectacle, and the dying man or woman played the central role, with family, clerics, and sometimes strangers acting on the periphery. Now many plague victims were suffering and dying utterly alone and many found this to be incredibly distressing".
Boccaccio was now a man who could "not understand or condone the altered world in which he found himself, a world in which people 'died not like men but more like wild animals'.
Interestingly enough, the religious implications of dying alone were looked upon as "impediments to the departed's entrance to heaven". It is important to note that "the lack of audience was not purely born out of a desire to make death social; rather, the presence of trusted companions at death was viewed as a safeguard for salvation".
DeleteAccording to religious doctrine at the time, when an individual was on their death bed, a priest should offer them extreme unction. " The ill individual was first anointed with water as a reminder of baptism and their status as a child of God. Then, prayers were said, and the priest prayed over the chrism, or sacred oil, before anointing the dying individual. The Lord's Prayer was recited, and then the sacrament of communion was performed. This act, according to Vatican law, was the last sacrament of life, and was oftentimes called the viaticum, which aided the dying person through the passage into eternal life. Through these last rites, the soul of the sufferer was made clean, and the passage to heaven made more likely. However, if a man died alone, without a priest present, (which became a normal occurrence at this aforementioned time), there could have been no extreme unction, no last confession, and it stands to follow, no salvation".
Those who lacked the mobility of the "social elite", those who had nothing to lose, namely the " poor and disenfranchised, the marginal social groups, poor rustics and urban jobless", who could find "little or no employment of times of prosperity, and who perhaps had nothing to lose", took the place of the family and friends of the dead and charged exorbitant fees for the privilege. This action "burial for profit", was in direct violation of the canon law laid down by Gratian, in which "it was concluded that, because burial was a spiritual function, making a profit from performing it amounted to simony, and was therefore a sin". Many could not resist the gold that flowed from the pockets of both the lower and upper classes.
DeleteAs the plague wore on, and deaths continued, the idea of each body being given an "individual place of holy ground gave way to trenches being dug in all of the cemeteries of the churches and into them new arrivals were dumped by the hundreds".
DeleteOne Florentine writer Marchionne di Coppo Stefani stated "the bodies were deposited unceremoniously in a pit and covered with dirt, and the process repeated as long as necessary; the graves were made 'just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese'. "These plague dead were not only stripped of their chosen final resting place, of the comforting rituals of death, but also of a burial on consecrated ground and a name". "In death they were anonymous, and would arise on judgment day surrounded by strangers, a final insult that Boccaccio found unforgivable".
"Just as death ritual became inverted, so, too, did societal order. It quickly became apparent that those in positions of authority could do little to nothing to stop its spread, not least among them doctors". Boccaccio stated, "nor a doctor's advice nor the strength of medicine could do anything to cure this illness". The city of Florence attempted to contain the spread through "administrative means, creating a magistracy that took over certain political powers for the duration of the sickness". They created laws that ensured that "quantitates of filth were removed from the city... and many directives were issued concerning the maintenance of good health". They "enacted laws that banned the entrance of those coming from areas affected by the plague including Pisa and Genoa, and made the sale of clothing belonging to the sick illegal; they also severely restricted mobility within the city". This had the effect of "further disenfranchising the population of the city". "People ceased to follow any rules, since death seemed imminent". Boccaccio noted that "the revered authority of the laws, both divine and human had fallen and almost completely disappeared for, like other men, the ministers and executors of the laws were either dead or sick, and those that survived could do nothing to stop the plague".
Delete"The medical community in the fourteenth century still subscribed to the theories of Hippocrates and Galen, the latter of who believed that illness was the result of miasma. While the doctors seemed to be blinded by their almost unwavering faith in corrupt air, the common people realized that there was something dangerous about coming into contact with the sick and the things that belonged to them". Indeed Boccaccio mentioned that "almost without exception, the healthy took a single and very inhuman precaution, namely to avoid or run away from the sick and their belongings".
Delete"The doctors and many of the educated class, in contrast often attributed illnesses, including the plague, to more ephemeral causes; the wrath of God was the favorite, followed by astronomic coincidences, usually between Mars and Saturn". Giovanni Villani subscribed to this school of thought in his "Chronice". He stated "the plague... was foretold by the masters in astrology".
DeleteOnce plague struck, "the doctors and surgeons of medieval Florence could offer no real help". Tommaso del Garbo (1305-1370), a Professor of Medicine in Perugia and a contemporary of Boccaccio, listed the following as effective in avoiding the plague in his book Consilio Contro Alla Peste: " notaries, confessors, relations and doctors who visit the plague victims on entering their houses should open the windows... and way their hands with vinegar and rose water and also their faces...it is also a good idea before entering the room to place in your mouth several cloves and eat two slices of bread soaked in the best wine and then drink the rest of the wine", 'which only served to further emphasize the medical community's preoccupation with the concept of polluted air.' The ill were "often bled in an attempt to balance their humors (blood, phlegm,yellow bile and black bile), but this only served to weaken them further and increase their "susceptibility to the pestilence".
In short, "the pestilence brought those who had before been on high down into the squalor in which the masses lived. De Mussi described it thusly: you who enjoyed the world and upon whom pleasure and prosperity smiled, who mingled joys with follies, the same tomb receives you and you are handed over as food for worms".
DeleteThe poor received some benefit from the "suddenly empty city; the rapid decrease in population freed up what resources were to be had, and the poor took advantage of it: 'everyone felt he was doomed to die and, as a result abandoned his property, so that most of the houses became common property, and any stranger who came upon them used them as if he were their rightful owner'. "The reversal of the rightful order was disorienting to the survivors".
"As a surviving member of the upper class, of the arbiters of taste in the pre-plague world, Matteo Villani's main concern was returning the city to its former glory. However the plague had wrought profound changes inside and around the city. The elite of Florence had enjoyed relative stability since the partisan conflicts of the 1310's, and had managed to consolidate the vast majority of Florence's power in the hands of a few dozen families. The elite sowed discord among the guilds in an attempt to keep them weak and in many cases, succeeded. For the Villani brothers (of mercantile stock), as for all upper class Florentines, life was intrinsically bound up in coin, and property, and in titles. There was a clear divide between the rich and the poor, between nobility and peasantry, and the divide defined how one passed the sum of one's years on earth. However, the pestilence cared not a bit for that divide, as many a chronicler noted, after its' two year sojourn in the city, the divide itself was in many ways annihilated".
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"Even today the Bubonic plague remains active, incubating in the bellies of fleas, and occasionally making the species jump to infect humans. However, la grande mortalita changed nothing so much as it did Florence in 1348".
DeleteThe black death is what brought about all the benefits we take for granted today such as wages paid for labor, trade guilds, the rights of workers, a middle class, education for the masses...
DeleteAll this came about because of the labor shortage and the clearing out of useless eaters and slums and over-population.
Is it any wonder that many today welcome a similar event which might leave only a billion or so people on this planet?
Think of how much nicer everything would be if more than half the people on this crowed planet were here no longer....
No body wants to die but it happens anyway and this way it might save the rest of us like all plagues have saved the remaining population since these eons began.
The pick pockets on the Florence buses are legendary, they work in teams and have it down to a science, with amazing; slight of hand, timing, and blocking. About the time you realize you've been "violated", the bus door opens, they run out, and the bus is moving again with you and your loved ones on it, with everyone wondering what just happened.
ReplyDeleteThe street thieves in Italy are gypsies or Albanians, etc....
DeleteI don't think Italians do that because they are involved in larger crimes...
btw Mit was sorry to hear about your "kidnapping" experience, and glad you made out alive.
ReplyDeleteWhen my father was 19 he was captured on an island off of Korea and was a POW treated as a spy until he escaped...
ReplyDeleteThen when I was 18 I was snatched in Austin Texas and also escaped....
So people tell me life isn't made up completely of coincidences.....life is nothing but coincidences and there isn't a single thing random about it.