Sauve Qui Peut

Jacques Attali is one of the wise men of France. Economist, philosopher, and writer of over 20 profound books, he was  the first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and a former advisor to President Mitterrand.

Guido has a special affection for M Attali. While chairman of an economic commission for Sarkozy, the current French president, Jacques Attali took the effort to communicate with Guido at 12 am Paris time. Naturally the discussion was in French. And maybe even more naturally, it was not about economics, but instead concerned the quality and real purpose of life. < Try to picture the impossibility of Bernanke or Geithner doing this any time of day and in any language. >

Recently M. Attali did a video interview for Le Figaro, a French national newspaper. It was difficult to entirely understand. Not only because Guido's French is flabby, but because Parisians talk very rapidly, sort of  equivalent to a New York or London cabby in English, or an American Tobacco auctioneer.

But what I did understand was not a happy story.

Basically M. Attali stated their are two "grave" problems facing the world. The economy and the environment. The upcoming G-20 meeting will be "in vain" he was "sorry to say". Here,  roughly translated from the written story, is the gist of his opinion -

" He said the crisis is far from over. The country is heavily indebted to revive the economy and restore confidence to the point that today ' the weapon of public expenditure 'is unusable, unemployment rises ' dramatically, especially in France, Germany and Italy ' . And even the rise of the stock market 'may be temporary.'

The period is best, he said, marked by ' the political impotence of markets to address such fundamental issues.'  He cited in particular the question of equity of banks, the separation between retail banking and investment banking, because now the banks are speculating with depositors' money. "

As if to confirm this view, yesterday the German newspaper Die Zeit had a story on the dramatic fall of that country's exports. < See the articles  German Car Industry Kaput and The German Economy- Party Time? on this website. > The steepest decline has been in exports to other European countries - particularly Spain and Great Britain. But even sales to China dropped, though the Germans evidently consider this positive because they "only" fell by 3.9%.

Independently from Die Zeit, "recent German unemployment figures indicate an acceleration in the rate of redundancies". In plain talk, that means more people are being fired at a faster rate.

Optimistically, the German export federation BGA forecasts exports to increase by 10% in 2010.  All I can say to that is - See, and you only thought dreamers lived in America.

And like America, Europe is facing a major crisis. There is no decoupling. The rest of the world is no different in economic well being than America.

The title of this article - Sauve Qui Peut - is a French exclamation hard to express in English, and  that has variously been translated as "Every man for himself." "Screw you." "Your Mother's Privates" etc.

 Perhaps it is best explained by an example -

Two months before the fall of the Bastille, there were food demonstrations throughout French cities and towns. Basically there was enough bread, but the distribution system was dysfunctional. < Sound familiar America? > One of these towns, Aix, had a large crowd in front of it's civic buildings. The kings magistrate, or some such official, told them to go home. He felt brave with a brigade of armed soldiers surrounding him.

Some woman in rags approached him about her kids starving and he made some arrogant reply that stones were too good for her. She pelted him with some mud or horse droppings < the story is vague on this detail >. Whereupon the official grabbed a soldier's rifle, pointed it at her,  and screamed - "Sauve qui peut.". Thereupon, brave soul that he was , he immediately fled into the civic building. The crowd went ballistic, the soldiers panicked and fired their guns, and a massacre ensued.. As if on cue riots broke out throughout Aix, and were only pacified weeks later by a citizen militia. < Basically they just persuaded everybody to go home. >

Incidents like these occurred throughout France. This, and not the fall of the Bastille, was the beginning of the French Revolution.

"Apres moi, le' deluge." - Louis XV