Francois Hollande elected as new French president

Not too sure whats going on, but as far as im aware he really did win the election.

More importantly combined with the results of the greek election we have the beginning of the single currency collapse, and about time.

The collapse will be excrutiating, and plunge all of us into very harsh times indeed, but is necessary in that countries can finally go back to their own currencies and start trading at the correct level of interest for their economies and be able to devalue, the huge problem that struggling countries like greece are suffering without at the moment.

The euro project must be abandoned, or more chaos will ensue, and the EU, especially Germany's ignorance of the situation, can no longer be tolerated.

Trade between europe is essential in order for all countries to prosper and be at peace with one another, but a currency and flag which no one needed should finally be consigned to history.

The real threat to all of us in Europe remains the way our corporations are using China as a cheap labour pool, exporting our capital to Asia and removing our skills, whilst at the same time our cowboy financial institutions plunder our pensions and savings.

15% tax income tax, Alps in the winter, lakes in the summer. What else could anybody want?

But where is the evidence that the rich will flee if their taxes are put up? they haven't been doing the vital investing that the champions of austerity say will disappear if we change tactics anyway.

With a 75% income tax? Who on earth who is movable with his job would stay?

The 75% kicks in on earnings over a million Euros a year, so your concern is that those earning more than e1m will go? They will already have most of their money with your trader friends in Zurich or Monaco anyway, so what difference would that make exactly?

In the case of banks and other too big to fails though it would be a huge net benefit to countries like the UK and France if they were to "leave" and headquarter in Zurich, Qatar or Dubai. Our taxpayers would then be relieved of the huge threat they represent the next time their casino operations fail and they demand a cash injection of 50% of our GDP to "rescue" them.

I said "leave" in inverted commas because it's always just the *headquarters* that "leaves" - sometimes not even the real HQ, but just a shell operation, a couple of computers and an accountant behind a buzzer in Luxembourg. This is apparently enough to convince our manipulated tax authorities that they are no longer in the country, even though their big money-making operations still are.

The banks now are analagous to mafiosi or criminal empires and many of their activities aimed at us "customers" are similar to organised criminal operations like drug smuggling or vice rings.

http://www.perspectiveone.com/rebuttal-to-scandinavian-socialism.asp
http://theuklibertarian.com/2010/06/22/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism/



Yes, they did, didn't they? £8 pint, anyone?

Sigh. It's a 75% tax on incomes OVER 1 MILLION EUROS. Stop propagandising.

In fact, the US and Britain used to have very similar (even higher) tax rates in the 50s/60s/70s and their economies steadily expanded throughout most of those periods, the rich still got richer, just at a lesser pace and people enjoyed a better quality of life because public services, infrastructure and amenities were better.

The US, which has become the poster child for low taxes, has such chronic declines in public infrastructure now that many experts are using phrases like "third-world" to describe it. In some states, the major roads are becoming unusable and public hospitals are near collapse.

You've said everything.

I would add that this victory is bringing a fresh wind to the entire Europe: what if other countries decided to increase tax rates too? What if we realised that this fiscal policy is actually fair (the exact rate of 75% can be discussed though)? Do you think that the wealthiest would indefinitely move on across the world? In my opinion, it's only a matter of will, nothing else.

Much harder to do with a bigger in terms of both size and economy power, and one of the biggest and strongest nations in the EU.

We'd all like to be like Scandanavia , but not sure it's really possible for countries such as UK, France, Germany etc. If that happened the whole of the eu would be pretty much screwed.

That's just out of order. Is your hate so big that you're actually comparing financial institutions to criminals? What do you have to support such a claim? For me it's survival of the fittest. It's hilarious that it's always those from outside are the ones criticizing the immense profits they make and how successful they are at what they do.

Fair? How is this policy fair? If people are smart enough and work hard to earn more than £1MM, why should they pay that much tax? If it was fair, everybody would pay the same. Unless you earn below a certain figure of course.

Yes, and crucially if he can succeed in influencing Merkel and the Germans to alter course and start spending again and seriously take on the Euro crisis by making the ECB a proper central bank. There are signs already that Merkel may be showing flexibility on the former, but the latter appears to be utterly gridlocked and will probably still lead to some kind of catastrophic failure; my guess is that Greece and possibly even Spain and Italy will end up leaving the Euro and that the Euro will then either unravel or become some kind of Euro 2 with only Germany, Denmark and Austria in one and reversion in the others.

Note his rather optimistic (naive?) assertions that he will effectively nationalise the bond market problem - let's assume this was pap for the left of his party but are they really silly enough and Little France enough to have such grand delusions? It is true that the bond markets are political instruments carrying out global policy moves for Goldman Sachs and JPM, but they are instruments of the US banks and the CIA, not something the French can do anything about.

... - the ECB could start operating like a proper central bank as an alternative. The problem is that the Euro was not set up as a proper currency - it was a sort of "pretend" currency in some ways, in that it never had (as the crisis has shown) real central bank backing and governmental control.

Maybe it was too grandiose a project, but Germany also has a lot to lose by letting it go - maybe Germany will soon see sense at last and start getting real about how to run it. It will mean that Germans can't just have things all their own way though - access to the privileged markets to sell their goods and zero-risk for the debts those markets run up.

The real threat to all of us in Europe remains the way our corporations are using China as a cheap labour pool, exporting our capital to Asia and removing our skills, whilst at the same time our cowboy financial institutions plunder our pensions and savings.

France will suffer for this unless the guy who won dillutes his schemes for EU domination.

75% tax rate on people earning 1 million or more? Who the **** does he think did his funding for the presidency?

Normal people?

Such fail but hey, its france so I dont give a crap.

I hate to quibble but campaign finance law in France is incredibly strict, and so the rich did not finance Hollande's campaign - nor did they finance Sarkozy's. Only physical persons are allowed to contribute to campaigns and political parties - corporations and any non-physical entity are forbidden from providing financial support in any way, be that through money or services offered. A physical person may contribute up to €150 in cash or up to €4000 by cheque or online. France instead has state funding for political campaigns. So yes, normal people did fund his campaign.

I hate to quibble but campaign finance law in France is incredibly strict, and so the rich did not finance Hollande's campaign - nor did they finance Sarkozy's. Only physical persons are allowed to contribute to campaigns and political parties - corporations and any non-physical entity are forbidden from providing financial support in any way, be that through money or services offered. A physical person may contribute up to €150 in cash or up to €4000 by cheque or online. France instead has state funding for political campaigns. So yes, normal people did fund his campaign.