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Cheminade: Who Is Whispering in François Hollande's Ear?

French Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande kicked off his electoral campaign in major a speech on Jan. 22. Amidst his at-times lyrical presentation, he made some interesting statements on the crisis, which reflect the influence of Jacques Cheminade's program.

He said, for example, that his "foe is the world of finance", which "has taken control of the economy, of society, and even of our lives. It is now possible, in a fraction of a second, to move staggering sums of money, and to threaten countries."

The fight against finance, he explained, will begin here, "by voting up a law on banks that will force them to separate their lending activities from their speculative transactions. No French bank will be allowed have a branch in tax havens. Toxic financial products, i.e. those unrelated to the needs of the real economy, will simply be prohibited. Stock options will be eliminated. And bonuses monitored."

However, a few days later, after his remarks had provoked an outcry in financial circles, François Hollande said on Jan. 26 that deposit and investment banking would be separated, but remain within the same institutions, which is similar to the British "ring-fencing" system.

His backtracking prompted an immediate reaction from Jacques Cheminade: "He should know that if you leave separate activities under the same roof, you inevitably end up allowing financial incest to be practiced. And you become de facto an accomplice of it. That's what happened in the United States with the Dodd-Frank bill, which is a real Swiss cheese allowing all kinds of exemptions and embezzlement for the benefit of Wall Street."

He also criticized François Hollande, the current front-runner, for claiming that his "foe has no name, no face, and no party". In fact, Cheminade countered in his statement, the adversary has both the name and the face of Wall Street and the City of London, and it also has a party -- made up of all those, on the right or the left, who support those interests.

"Mr. Hollande let people from that party, with that face, whisper into his ear. That is what led to his self-destructive choice, four days after his apparently passionate speech." The blackmail was carried out by the likes of Baudoin Prot of the BNP Paribas and René Ricol, General Commissioner for Public Investment, and more directly by the think-tank Vigieco 2012, which recently invited John Vickers of the UK Independent Banking Commission to present his ring-fencing concept (cf. SAS 3/12). à la rescousse. "All these false friends told him such a separation of the banks would be incompatible with European law and the management of French banks."

In that case, commented Cheminade, look at BNP Paribas. It "has a ratio of 3% between its equity and pledged assets, which makes it like a frog inflated to the size of a bull, along with the French and British banks which bet more than others on the markets, and are being bailed out by the generosity of the ECB, which is providing them loans at 1% for 3 years. Mr. Hollande, it is impossible to half-fight the financial world, just as it is impossible to be half-pregnant."

As for the measures announced by President Sarkozy on Jan. 29, Cheminade told the StrategicAlert that his proposal for a tax on financial transactions is meaningless, first because it is high time to eradicate the vice, not merely to tax it, and secondly, because the original Tobin tax was aimed, in the situation of 20 years ago, at reducing transactions on the money markets, and not some type of lady-do-rightly delusion, as Sarkozy intends it to be.

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