[XR7]

[SittinYonder]

ROFLOL! Reading the article I kept thinking: "Cheese eating surrender monkeys do it again." Then I scrolled down to your post and there was the thing itself!

[XR7]

"Given the recent events in France, foreign companies would really have to have become altruistic to invest heavily in France," he said. Emmanuel Ferry, chief economist...

LOL

[Knitting A Conundrum]

This was no surprise. This is the way things happen there. Near dictatorial approaches to legal stuff are counterbalanced with strikes.

Doesn't mean it wasn't a good or bad thing. Just that the people who could mobilize people into the streets didn't want it.

French method of doing government.

Now, if they want a society where young people have great difficulty getting jobs, unless they are among the elite, well, they will reap the whirlwind later on.

[luvbach1]

This will only whet the appetite to riot of the next group with a grievance.

[sam_paine]

Bowing to pressure from students and unions,

Mobocracy.

[GSlob]

Maybe the graphics would be better if the white flag was attached to the oscillating prehensile tail [to emphasize 'monkey' part] and not to the upper paw.

[GSlob]

Maybe the graphics would be better if the white flag was attached to the oscillating prehensile tail [to emphasize 'monkey' part] and not to the upper paw.

[NordP]

And the spineless saga continues....

[Vicomte13]

The key economic fact in the article is that the markets in France have not been seriously affected.

International investors are not altruists. They invest where they can make money and do not give a damn about the underlying political structures so long as they can keep making money.

France does not now have the CPE, and foreign investment has been rolling in anyway. The government proposed the CPE, it has been rejected after political turmoil...and markets were not affected. Now, you have some big internal partisans for CPE waving the bloody flag and screaming about how nobody will invest in France.

But the truth is that foreign investment in France was robust before the CPE under the current laws, and the markets were not affected by the dispute, and foreign investment is not going pour out just because the French opted to maintain the status quo.

The capital investors worldwide don't care about the CPE.
It was a bad law, and it's gone now, and it won't make a difference. French economic growth remains on track at about 2% for 2006. All of the screaming and yelling is political, not economic.

International investors are cold-blooded rational capitalists who care about the bottom line. And the bottom line is that the CPE was, is, and will remain irrelevant to them. France is still a good place to make money, so they will continue to invest there, as before.

The political classes on all sides will wave the bloody shirt some more, no doubt, and predict meltdown and The End Of The World As We Know It, but the capitalists who actually make the markets are not impressed.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

This whole episode has the qualities of a bad Scrappleface piece, except it's all true. That people would be rioting over a law that allowed employers to actually fire some people who aren't cutting it seems like it should be satire.

May we never let something like this happen here.

[doug from upland]

MIDI - OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING

As we deal with Iraqi transgressions
The French haven't learned Chamberlain's lessons
At one time we thought they were allied with us
Now we don't give a damn if they're hit by a bus

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys…that is what they have become
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys…oui, oui…the French are such scum

Thanks to us they are not speaking German
They are giving new meaning to vermin
At one time we thought they were allied with us
Now we don't give a damn if they're hit by a bus

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys…that is what they have become
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys…oui, oui…the French are such scum

We don't need their wine…they are deluded
Napa Valley's just fine, we've concluded
At one time thought they were allied with us
Not we don't give a damn if they're hit by a bus

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys…that is what they have become
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys…oui, oui…the French are such scum
Oui, oui…the French are such scum

[dfwgator]

If you listen to fools...the mob rules.

[dead]

The French rioting was getting too ugly.

[libertarianPA]

France - where surrender is an art

[SunkenCiv]

De Villepin isolated with Chirac eager to end revolt
The Daily Telegraph | April 5, 2006 | Colin Randall
Posted on 04/05/2006 4:17:28 AM EDT by MadIvan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1609441/posts