Where elections have meaning

Page two of Monday’s Financial Times had the following stories: Spotlight on Greek left after poll surge; Sinn Fein’s anti-austerity stances strikes chord with young Irish; and Hollande must cope with split inside EU over path to reform.

All of these stories are about elections in European countries, where public opinion can and does translate into public policy (it does not here), and the reaction to “austerity” programs, or the idea that public programs for public benefit are the public’s business do not exist at the whim of bankers.

Here’s a snippet from the Hollande article:

What gets less attention was Mr. Hollande’s revealing admission that he did not share [President of the European Central Bank Mario] Draghi’s vision, endorsed by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, that … growth … should be structured on structural reforms, such as increasing labour market flexibility.*

Mr. Hollande was not coy about this. “Can we really believe that liberalism**, privatisations and deregulation, which led us into the financial crisis we are in, well help us get out of the crisis?

Indeed. Mr. Hollande, please come to America, write about us as de Tocqueville did, give us the insight he did. We really need some French wisdom on this side of the pond.
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* “labor market flexibility” is code for hire and fire at will, no job security.
**”liberalism”, over there, is equivalent to what we might refer to as “neoliberalism” here, or the Greenspan-Bernancke-Clinton school of deregulation and low taxation of concentrated wealth.