Gordon Brown likes to think of himself as above anyone else when it comes to dealing with world of finance. A few years ago, he was late for a meeting with policy wonks in the Treasury and chortled condescendingly that he had just come off the phone with the fifth French Finance Minister in five years. The point was clear: while the French have no stability at their financial top, Labour had in Britain guaranteed a better way of economic management.
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James Delingpole
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All the more interesting, therefore, that as the financial markets tumble down it is France, not Britain, which has taken the lead in calling for a financial crisis summit on how to reform the financial system. There may be no reason for the pan-European fund French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has talked about, but it is certainly worth discussing the idea given the problems created by European governments bailing out only “their” banks in what is a fundamentally international market.
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