FORMER FRENCH PRESIDENT ORDERED 264 SURVEYS ABOUT HIMSELF….& DSK
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Both Nicolas Sarkozy and IMF boss Christine Lagarde stand four-square in the dock today as the recently elected Francois Hollande discovers a certain minimalité de verité in the French national accounts. But Sarkozy’s expensive obsession with Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the most striking aspect of the revelations.
The French media are having a field day at the moment, especially those of the liberal-Left persuasion, as it transpires that a black and largely inexplicable hole of around €50billion has appeared since the last ‘assessment’ of France’s fiscal position. I am sure that my many Greek friends and supporters will be delighted to know that the She-Devil Vixen Lagarde stands more guilty of incompetence, having got seven of her nine forecasts wrong, and aserted that France “does not have a deficit”. Sadly, last year’s Tresor Publique report shows that her ‘no deficit’ was roughly €100bn adrift.
However, rather more guilty of Big Fat Fibs is Nico, having been more competent at hiding than Chrissie was at forecasting…just not quite clever enough. Nobody will GAF in France now he’s out of power (it is the French way) but one or two red-tinged Frogs are hopping mad about Sarkozy’s misuse of State funds for des sondages (consumer research).
In total, the Little One ordered fully 264 opinion polls about himself while President, running up a whopping €6.35bn bill in the process. He claimed this as State expenditure, but everyone knows it was a way of getting free research for the UMP.
But the batch of polls that stands out is that one containing just one question plus a list: who do you think would be the outstanding candidate at the next election for the Socialist Party?
Sources tell me that he ordered six of these during 2009 and 2010, and they all came back with the same answer: Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Just four months later, DSK was arrested on trumped-up charges of assaulting a New York Hotel maid. They ruined his political career.
Now the incompetent clownette Christine Lagarde runs the IMF, and the world is a different place because of that. But it makes no difference to poor Francois Hollande: he must pick up the tab.
As of course must many others, thanks to the idiot austerity policy which – despite utterances to the contrary – Lagarde has ruthlessly prosecuted. Only yesterday, in fact, the Greek government received the remaining one billion euros of the country’s latest bailout. The disbursement came from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the eurozone’s temporary bailout fund, as was agreed by finance ministers in May. “We received one billion euros and out of this we have already paid 450 million to the EFSF,” an official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Since DSK’s arrest in May 2011, all has been madness (and nobody has shown the slightest wisdom) in relation to the global fiscal and economic crisis. I am not saying anything would have been different with DSK around. But I can be reasonably sure that this sex nuisance would now be President of France, not the luckless Hollande.
The Slog 