Professor Stiglitz is not one of my favorite contributors to PS because of his rather extreme leftist opinions.

However, this article makes some very good comments on critical issues of economic, environment and political issues confronted the modern civilization.

First point: excellent emphasis of sequencing in economic and political reform. Even though Stiglitz does not mention the hierarchy of needs by Maslow, that theory fits very well with his position.

When the French president is complaining –as he has the terrible habit – to criticize his own people of being ‘ignorant gaulois’ for seeing the problem of end of the month, rather the end of the world, it reveals serious issues of ignorance in social sciences and ‘political management’ skills: vision, strategy, implementation, change management, crisis management. He failed on all this qualities, as one would expect from those produced by the soviet-style so-called ‘elite’ ENA school – apparatchiks who rather being alpha-plus mandarins are simply epsilon-minus semi-morons of the French establishment.

Take the example of the ‘energy conversion’ to limit the environment degradation - the favorite subject of the French president. It’s just fine, but first give me a job, and give me a job that allows me to eat and get warmed, and then and only then I will worry about the environment. If you can create jobs and prosperity without destroying everything around, that would be great (that was the simple, but not simplistic, message of Maslow).

Starting to dismantle 50% of nuclear power without any viable alternative in place is simply irresponsible policy from fanatic greens.

At the time I write these lines, in a small village in the French Alps, the temperature is about -2° Celsius, I have never seen a clear Sun for the past two weeks and not a single breeze is moving the trees. So much for the solar and wind energy. Well, thank you those who had the common sense to build a solid nuclear industry and are resisting ideological non-sense.

There is no more vicious insult in France that to call somebody neo-liberal. The fact is a liberal policy in economics was never applied in the country, but more of the ‘l’état stratege’ and ‘l’état actionnaire’ that left the country in a modest low-growth, low level of living corporatist society, despite official statistics – GDP, deficit, inflation – that I consider highly suspicious, in line with the soviet-style of five-year plans. The French people is one of the most depressed nation in the world, very little confident in the future, and – not surprisingly – saving a lot, protecting themselves at the retiring age from the tax repression of governments, from left to right.

The introduction of the euro delivered a fatal blow to the old system of high inflation, high monetary growth; when the euro and ECB removed those easy solutions and devastating effects for the long-term growth, what was left is debt to roll over old debt, borrowing (2018) €80+ billions to maintain high private consumption of… imported Chinese goods and IPhones (also made in China, with profits going to California). So, what is the reality of GDP growth, when you see the obscured reality of annual deficit (continuous since 1974) and accumulation of debt, at more than 100% to GDP – something the French commissioner apparently forget completely to mention – though a Maastricht criteria – when commenting the performance of his own country, while attacking the Italian government.

The ‘tiny elite’ doing fine – very good point: you have some 500 ‘enarques’ controlling the administration and the public sector and the hydra of banking and insurance clique that was – and still is protected by successive governments ever since 2008, without any change in the legislation of supervision system. Their latest ‘achievement’ - a new law granting them criminal immunity for anything illegal/criminal they do in their professional work. Long live separation of powers and ‘libertè, egalitè, fraternitè’.