. . . even if, like Germanys Gerhard Schröder, German Chancellor from 1998-2005, you are of the general social democrat mode, you rely on centralized government action too much, and you are not above stoking rabid denunciation of U.S. efforts to fight terrorism and WMD proliferation for your own political gain. Now who does that remind me of? Anyhow, according to the following WSJ article, in retrospect we can see that Schröder saved Germanys economy.
Let us hope this story in some form gets through to Frances President Hollande, and to whoever our own potential economic advisers would be to President Obama were he to win another term.