However, the English-language depiction of him is more as a French Clinton or Blair.
Your thoughts?
Also, in looking at the current American crisis, I've been thinking about the need for a national bank, one that would not replace the private sector, but would ensure the continuance of economic activity in times of economic duress (when credit is frozen by the private sector banks).
I know India has several goverment-run banks, and New Zealand has one. I suspect there are several in Asia, and I thought it was quite common in continental Europe as recently as the '90s (if not government-run, then a bank in which the goverment had a large ownership stake). Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Austria privatize its two national banks only a six or seven years ago? What is the landscape in Europe regarding national banks (not to be confused with central banks)?
Thanks...I would appreciate any comments you might have.
Which would make him a Communist in a latter-days-Blair / Clinton referential of course. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
Having met some of the Strauss-Kahn supporters a few days ago, I would say they still stand to the left of the Modem. It is however difficult to position people within the PS, because their statements and programmes follow internal tactical goals rather than political strategic positioning. "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
So, what does the PS stand for on economic and social issues apart from promoting the various factional leaders? A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
I blame the PS for devoting all its members' time and energy to internal infighting when they should spend them on political/economical/social/environmental theory, i.e. building viable alternative models and policies. This lack of substance is particularly worrying at a time when, thanks to the evident failure of the dominant model, there is a window of opportunity for alternative models. "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
And they are dead against mixing the roles in the separation of powers as we see daily at the moment.
Now, it may just be tactical on the part of Bayrou (how would I know), but I am pretty sure most militants are sincere in those positions. And it's clearly more of a militants' party than a leaders' party -actually leaders may be an overstatement in its use of plural. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
Then there is the Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW), which is a federal gov't owned bank, but is operating hardly for profit. They have special programs with low interest rates, e.g. for house insulation or solar energy on your roof. So its mostly a political purpose bank.
Then there are partly public banks, e.g. the Postbank, which is planned to be privatised completely and merged with the Deutsche Bank. Despite such privatisation, public institutions remain an important player in the banking industry.
The European Union's legislation has interfered with that in several ways. First, public banks are not allowed to get a tax payer funded guarantee on their debt, as this is seen as derailing of private competition. Second the statutes of the Sparkassen-assosation was required to be changed, so that private investors now can buy Sparkassen. But so far this hasn't happened.
Measured by balance sheet Sparkassen and Landesbanken have held 36% of the all banks balance-sheet sum together in 2002.
Another part of Germany's baking landscape are the cooperative banking institutions - Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken, which originally focused on very small credits (Raiffeisen said over a 100 years ago things similar to the ones Muhammad Yunus) and agricultural stuff. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
