The New Watchdogs Page #6

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"the fall of France", "decline",

"the French model", etc?

I've noticed there's a small vocabulary

of about 15 or 20 words,

without which

all the se journalists and experts

couldn't make a single sentence.

It's true!

Without the word "reform",

the y're speechless.

They can't put three words together.

In order to persuade,

you need methods of persuasion.

The media have their champions,

tirelessly working

the cameras and mikes.

In the past six years,

Frdric Lordon and Jean Gadrey

have been guests on radio

and TV shows 32 times.

During the same period,

Jacques Attali,

J-H Lorenzi and Michel Godet

have made

Hello and welcome to the

TV and politics show

with Eric Zemmour

and Claude Imbert.

Even though the journalists

and experts agree on the basics,

we still have to go through

the motions of debate.

The phone lines are open,

the contest can begin...

The media regularly stage fierce duels

between bitterly opposed debaters.

In this talk show on LCI,

left-wing intellectual

Jacques Julliard

locks horns each week

with right-wing philosopher Luc Ferry.

Be warned, their words

are shockingly violent.

I'm sorry, Luc...

I can't disagree with you there.

I wish I could.

I'd go the other way.

You'll agree with me here,

as I agreed with you there.

Like you, I'm glad

that public opinion is so strong.

I agree with Jacques.

Luc is absolutely right.

We need to explain about globalization.

You're stealing my words.

I have to agree about austerity.

You're right.

On that point,

Luc and I won't argue very fiercely.

I agree with Jacques.

The constitutional treaty

should have come first,

before enlargement.

Give me credit for thinking like you do.

I'm not a government minister,

but it's still my opinion.

I rather agree with Jacques,

except on one point,

which you kindly left open.

I wouldn't equate

liberalism with communism.

On that point, I quite agree with you.

What we also need,

as I'm sure Jacques agrees,

is something even tougher.

People say

we disagree too much.

They worry

about our relationship.

In fact, it's excellent.

This week, we entirely agree

and we're not ashamed of it.

Some articles of faith

are never questioned:

Europe in its present shape,

the general trend

towards market deregulation,

also known as globalization,

and the general scaling back,

and in France especially,

the quiet dismantling

of the welfare state.

That's the boundary line.

Some people debate within the box.

Others try to change it.

The opponents who want to change it

are simply locked out.

Those who are happy

to paddle around in the sandbox

are allowed in.

But the resulting political debate

is terribly stunted.

For convincing the public,

a favorite rhetorical device

is the foreign example.

Out there, abroad,

in nearby or distant countries,

we see brave choices,

the example to follow.

Among the foreign countries

that wisely and bravely

bit the bullet of reform,

the country most cited

by French journalists and experts

was Great Britain.

Its free-market swing,

begun by Margaret Thatcher,

was fervently admired.

A political talk show

on June 12th 2004

on French public television

summed up the arguments

in favor of the British model.

Journalist Thierry Thuillier,

future Head of News at France 2,

preaches the free market

with evangelical zeal.

But can we be sure

that the free market model

would be bad for France?

Objectively,

we can't help noticing

that it has won Tony Blair

a third term in office

and the British economy

is thriving.

In France,

the Polish plumber is a bogeyman.

In England, he's a welcome guest.

We report on the British

model of integration.

To see for ourselves

how the UK economy is thriving,

we went to London

to meet an expert who is never invited

by French journalists.

Sir Michael Marmot

chaired the World Health Organization's

on social determinants

and life expectancy.

Professor of Epidemiology

and WHO expert

Seeing it works,

should we copy the English?

Stay with us.

Four years later,

the recession showed how well

the UK economy was working.

State to the rescue!

The Big Slide

Free Fall

On the morning of Sept. 15th 2008,

the media woke up aghast

to a huge financial crisis

which threw over 64 million people

into deep poverty

all over the world.

Too busy hailing

the rosy dawn of liberalism,

the experts were caught napping.

One of their best-known

and influential faces,

and equally caught napping,

was Alain Minc.

While Michel Godet has been playing

Joe Expert for 30 years,

Alain Minc has been batting

in a different league.

Alain Minc, on page 230

you call yourself a left-wing liberal.

What does that mean?

Good question!

Alain Minc is one of the brightest...

This ber-expert

advises business leaders,

ministers and heads of state.

In the media, he is onstage

and also backstage.

Onstage, he appears on book programs

and political talk shows.

Backstage, he chairs

the supervisory board of Le Monde

and is the brains behind

many media group managers.

In 2005, his friend Vincent Bollor,

friend of his friend Nicolas Sarkozy,

gave him a show

on his newly created TV channel.

Good evening

and Happy New Year.

January 5th, 2008.

Minc invited

the inevitable

Christian de Boissieu.

They discussed

the American sub primes crisis

that led 9 months later,

as we know,

to the financial market meltdown

in September 2008.

I'd like to qualify

your comments.

I'm with you 95%,

but I'll use my 5%

of intellectual freedom

to point out the amazing

flexibility of the system.

It goes to show

that the financial system

is so finely regulated

that it averted a crisis

which could have been

as bad as the big financial crises

we've seen in the past.

Deep down,

it's a very resilient system.

It's not regulated

by any visible body,

but it's very well regulated

all the same.

The interplay between central banks

and governments...

In reality, empiricism

prevails over ideological stances

and the world economy

is pretty well run.

That's vintage Minc.

He's in top form.

Everything points

to the recession of the century,

all the signs are there,

but the system is resilient,

it will take it in its stride,

we'll glide on through

and growth will resume.

There's a body

of intellectual speculation

that always makes

the same enormous mistakes.

It ought to be punished.

Not financially,

but there should come a point

when the democratic system

bans those people

from the positions they hold

as top experts,

high priests and speakers of truth.

They're anything but.

This crisis is a prime example.

It took by surprise,

as that clip shows very well,

all those people

who'd been saying for 20 years

that deregulation was the best system.

It's a vivid demonstration

of a colossal mistake.

Six months later,

on June 7th 2008,

Alain Minc displayed the same optimism.

He invited

another famous expert, Daniel Cohen,

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