Nicolas Sarkozy, French Ex-President: Flashy Lifestyle, Carla Bruni to Blame?

No, the French are throwing in the towel.

They have just voted to throw themselves over the cliff.

And they tend toward doing that quite often...

Actually, usually they are more sensible. I guess they are over the point of no return, with more on the dole than working.

In no way Carla was a reason of what is happening in Europe:

Since now more than a full year, people in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Belgium and more recently Netherlands have been trying to apply a similar to the Tea Party system in order to fight the debts.

France was among them with some special French property due to a Constitution which set the President somehow like a king: he concentrates all the powers and many clashes took place during the last 5 years, and mainly lately, with the PM (Fillon) because of te character of Sarkozy.

Even, during his last campaign for President it happened that Sarkozy and the PM, campaigning separately, issue contradictory statements because at the last instant there were changes the PM was not aware!

Power concentration into one hand, the appearance to "depend" from Germany, the appeal of Merkel for a support to Sarkozy (as if Cameron would call for support to Romney), too many positions given to friends, a mess with Bettencourt (l;Oreal) who may have provided funds for the 2007 campaign to Sarkozy, the production of the agreement with Ghadaffi who grated - it seems - 50 million Euros to the 2007 campaign, and top of top, the recent decision of the European bank to low down the austerity to cope with the debts were the real reasons.

Sarkozy is a lawyer, not an economist and all these scandals issued a loss of confidence.

The used words after the disappointment: war, enemy, fight, etc. will no doubt have an influence on the coming Congress election to take place within the next 5 weeks.

Hollande, the new president, to the contrary to Sarkozy, is a very simple and communicative man who listen to each party before making any decision. He's a BRILLIANT economist who wants to ease a bit the austerity and create some demand for sparkling the recovery.

He intends to raise the taxes of the most wealthy who make more than the eq. of $1.3 million per month. He will as well raise the property taxes from 0.3% to 1.8%, momentarily, while the recovery is not starting. But this needs the Congress agreement.

But more than anything, Hollande is used to cooperation and despite his proverbial calm and somehow kind appearance, is a very strong man no corporation has ever been able to corrupt.

His department (State for US equivalent), the State Chirac was also heading many years ago, is mainly a farmer one and, despite of the actual economic mess, is one of the best managed one with good economic results in comparison to many others.

When he became aware of his victory he just said "C'est bien" (Good).

His PM will be nominated on May 15 or 16.

I hope you're right, but he won by 3%. He has a lot of saying "yes" to bad ideas ahead of him to keep that edge. The precipice awaits.

And you're right, Carla's not to blame. All Presidents wives should be babes. Keeps the interns safe. That's a great picture. He looks completely insane from the awesome sex. I doubt he gave a damn he lost. Someone else's rrrrreallybigproblem.

"The precipice awaits"

What do you mean? It looks to me that you intend to say that Hollande will get into it!

Just hard not to, with the people behind him pushing in that exact direction. If you say he's a good man, I believe you. He'll have to be.

So France has shifted from a light socialist to more of a harder socialist and Greece has followed suit with some Nazi’s just to really mix things up. They both are denouncing the required austerity programs that are required to bail out these failing countries. The both have a mountain of debt and think that increased spending will fix the problem. They both have high unemployment and they think that high taxes will fix the problem.

I say let’s do an experiment. Let us stand back and watch and see what happens. The world should let them go and sort this out as they think they have the answer. The people have spoken and the direction is clear. We should not disenfranchise the people of these countries by giving them bail out money when they are choosing to not spend wisely.

The fact is that this is a plan for disaster and will fail. You can’t spend your way out of debt as a family, a country or a planet. That is the real reason we can’t interfere. We have no money and printing more only causes inflation (it’s a hidden tax on the poor).

Paying down debt and Spending only what the taxes will provide is the solution.

Truth,Clark. Two Republics, two roads. Worth seeing what would be the best path before striking out. One way or the other, we'll know in 4 years.

4 years too late. We need a guy who agrees with your last sentence exactly NOW.

I'll buy that. We could have used him 4 years ago.

Austerity. Why cant they just say "stop runaway spending"?

Basically, the country is filled with a lot of sheeple, as long as they get their daily hay from the government, they don't care. Little do they know, "the good times" quit rolling and someone heisted the Kawasaki.

I did not find them to be sheeple. The French are proud, self reliant people. I am surprised the following generations, even as here are fooled. The communists must have dumbed them down by taking over the schools there, like here.