France’s notoriously divided and ideologically marooned Socialist opposition has long struggled to find a leader capable of selling a modern leftist vision that voters will embrace. Right now, though, conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy may be doing that job for the Socialists. Following his Tuesday address to the United Nations in which he characterized international financial markets as “insane,” Sarkozy Thursday sounded like an indignant leftist when he called for sweeping regulation and “moralization” of international finance, and declared that the era “of the market always being right is over.”
“A certain conception of globalization has closed out: [one that] imposed its own logic on the entire economy and helped pervert it,” Sarkozy said during a speech in Toulon, attacking those who had created the unfolding financial crisis. “Self-regulation as a way of solving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.”
That’s pinko talk for a man who came to power promising to liberalize the French economy, free up its markets, and roll back the 35-hour work week imposed by the Socialists. Sarkozy’s new views may be similarly surprising to some of his closest friends, who include several billionaire businessmen and stock market titans — an elite to whom critics have accused Sarkozy of tailoring his policies.
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