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Back To School
Deeply concerned that many of its citizens have barely a basic grasp of the realities of international economics, the French government plans a new body to help France learn to love capitalism.
The Council for the Diffusion of Economic Culture opens later this year, as a branch of the finance ministry. Lead by a the former editor of a national news magazine, it hopes to "boost financial literacy and communicate the benefits of wealth creation more effectively", according to the BBC.
Even the council's supporters would accept that it has its work cut out: Finance minister Thierry Breton bemoaned France's lack of an "economic culture" earlier this year. A recent opinion poll showed that French citizens were far and away more hostile to the free market than pretty much anywhere else in the world.
The BBC reports that French ministers are dismayed by the failure of economic reforms, the nation's dependence on the state and its suspicion of economic dynamism and entrepreneurialism. The Council, they hope, "will seek to promote financial education through popular culture including television, the print media and computer games."
Making progress with France's media could be the most difficult task the new council faces. France's broadcast and print media lean heavily to the left - Denis Boyles painted an amusing and accurate portrait of life at the troubled daily Libération, which gives some idea of how difficult it will be to persuade journalists to give the free market a fair hearing.
Broadcasters regularly give anti-capitalist protesters and spokesman an easy ride in interviews - Spring's protests against the CPE employment contract, when student protesters were indulged like favourite nephews by television journalists is a case in point. Members of the employers federation MEDEF, on the other hand, regularly find themselves on the receiving end of grillings other broadcasters reserve for crooks and terrorist sympathisers.
All despite the fact that French stocks do remarkably well, and French businesses are among the most respected in the world.
It has led to a certain surrealism in French life: Capitalism and globalisation are feared and loathed, yet barely understood. Attempts to explain the realities of international economics are drowned out by the voices of protestors, whether trade union leaders, state-sponsored academics or political journalists themselves. There appears to be a belief that France isn't out of step with the rest of the world - instead, it is the rest of the world that is suffering free market delusions, and one day the people will wake up and come round to France's way of thinking.
