Hollande’s dangerous dream of exceptionalism

Despite French President François Hollande’s commitment to reduce the public deficit and reform France’s employment laws in a bid to reduce rampant unemployment, credit agency Moody’s outlook for the country’s economic future is bleak.

This should be widely understood (which means it isn't), but it bears repeating nonetheless.  Josh Patashnik writes:

Tim approvingly points us to this in the Guardian:

SOCIAL SECURITY manages to be one of the most popular and misunderstood government programmes. It serves two purposes: to provide an income floor which keeps people out of poverty in retirement (a form of insurance), and to replace income from previous work (a forced saving scheme). There may be more efficient ways to achieve these goals, but generally, Social Security does a decent job at both.

SOCIAL SECURITY manages to be one of the most popular and misunderstood government programmes. It serves two purposes: to provide an income floor which keeps people out of poverty in retirement (a form of insurance), and to replace income from previous work (a forced saving scheme). There may be more efficient ways to achieve these goals, but generally, Social Security does a decent job at both.

By Gaius Publius. Cross posted from AmericaBlog

Writing in the Financial Times yesterday, Josef Ackermann – CEO of Deutsche Bank – argued that larger banks are not more dangerous to the health of financial system (and thus to taxpayers) than smaller banks.  According to him, system danger arises primarily from the degree to which banks are “interconnected”.

French President François Hollande was described as an “amateur” and compared to the emperor with no clothes Sunday as members of his party began to turn on him after his flagship 75% tax rate for France’s richest was ruled unconstitutional. France’s Constitutional Council said on Saturday that the president’s tax on earnings of at least one-million-euros-per-year “failed to recognize equality before public burdens,” because, unlike other income taxes, it applied to individuals and not households.