Word: jospin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Welcome to France, the only major Western country where the idea of making a profit evokes popular fear and loathing, where privatization and flexibility are such taboo words that Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a socialist, avoids using them. "You wonder just how exceptional France can be and still remain a player in the global economy," muses a Western diplomat in Paris. And yet--vive le paradoxe--France today boasts a healthy growth rate, low inflation and a muscular foreign-trade surplus. At the same time, Jospin has actually privatized more state-owned enterprises than did his conservative predecessors, has reined...
...minimum wage than the U.S. or most European countries. Laying workers off is legally complicated and prohibitively expensive. And, in Michelin's case, political dynamite. When the famed French tiremaker said last month that it was slashing 10% of its work force after posting a 17% rise in earnings, Jospin threatened to sanction Michelin and any profitable companies that laid off workers "abusively...
...recently Paris has also gained renown for something diametrically opposed to this aristocratic image--the resurgence of socialism in Western Europe. With the victory of Lionel Jospin in France's 1997 elections, the French socialists came back into power...
...four of these men seem to get along well with one another. One only needs recall the happy shots of Clinton and Blair--in Ireland or London or Washington--or the smiley weekends Jospin and Schroder spent in the capital this summer to be convinced of their collective jocularity. In theory, it seems, the Western world has never as been as poised to act as a cohesive unit as it is today, at the close of the twentieth century...
...organized world leadership is the last thing young people expect from these four men. Jospin is excused to some degree because France's President, Jacques Chirac, is still largely responsible for foreign policy and Jospin is preoccupied with getting his own country back on track. But among Blair, Clinton and Schroder, the situation is bleak. And yet whom do we have to blame? I don't have faith in the slick sell of these career politicians, and I voted for one. And I probably would have voted for Blair and Schroder, too, if I had been in a position...