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: The cigar-chewing plutocrat—that old standby of political cartoons—is enjoying quite a comeback. In Le Monde, a French daily, such tycoons have become a front-page staple, portrayed naked apart from the odd bow-tie. One Belgian newspaper, La Libre Belgique, showed a boss with cigar and top hat plunging to his doom after being stripped of his golden parachute by the Belgian prime minister (drawn as a flying Superman).
You get the idea. The “dictatorship of the markets” is dead, to quote Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, replaced by “political” leadership and an acceptance of the need for “massive” state intervention; after aid for the banks it is time to help companies and protect jobs. On October 23rd, he unveiled a “strategic national investment fund” that will buy stakes in French industries with borrowed money to protect them against foreign predators. When markets rise, he said, the state will sell its stake and make a profit—as happened after the 2004 bail-out of the Alstom engineering group. Still, Mr Sarkozy’s confidence is impressive. Is he certain his ploy will make money? And if he is, can we all have his stockbroker’s number?
In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi has been rejoicing over the new vogue for government subsidies. Only a short time ago, he recalled, state aid was viewed as “on a par with mortal sin”; now it was “a categorical imperative”. Even Britain wants to pour public money into bits of the economy that “make a difference”. The rush to meddle is not uniformly welcomed. Germany’s economics minister, Michael Glos, said Mr Sarkozy’s call for governments to take stakes in key industries went against “all successful principles of our economic policy”. And indeed, there are good economic reasons to be wary of intervention; history has not been kind to companies run by state planners.
In truth, few governments have money for meddling. Most intervention promised for the real economy so far has been virtual, repackaging existing spending. But where it takes place, such populism will be a problem if it undermines the core EU principle banning subsidies that distort competition within Europe. This underpins one of the greatest achievements of the European project—the single internal market that links 27 variously rich, poor, small and large countries, by creating a level playing field for trade between half a billion people. Weaken rules against state aid and you risk a “subsidy race”, says the EU competition commissioner, Neelie...
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