With all the hoopla about ‘Democratic Socialist Party’ -thereby giving socialists a bad name- and the talk about ‘preserving capitalism’, it’s worthwhile to take note of this AND bring it to the attention of those who wish to return to ‘days of yore’ and are doing their damndest to restore a failed system.

"“France’s economy,” it writes, “has been less hard hit than many. Its GDP is expected to shrink by 3 percent this year … against 4 percent in Britain, 4.4 percent in Italy, and 5.6 percent in Germany. It is less dependent on exports than Germany, and consumer spending in the first quarter of 2009 was up on the same period last year. The government … is set to have a deficit in 2009 (6.2 percent of GDP) well below those in America (13.6 percent) and Britain (9.8 percent).”

French household debt is half that in America, no bank has failed, none has been nationalized, executive pay is reasonable, and “the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent is far smaller than in Britain or America.” The country is crisscrossed by 230-mph TGV trains, 80 percent of the power is nuclear (and more is exported), its auto producers are in reasonably good shape, Air France is the most profitable airline in the world, and French-dominated Airbus sells more planes than Boeing."