It would seem that this strategy began to pay

Many respects, the process launched in November 2008 at the Washington G20 and amplified last month in London represents a success for Europe, and the Franco-German relationship in particular. It is indeed the European Union, under French Presidency, which has defined and made available an ambitious agenda for the reform of the international financial system, involving the major emerging countries and in convincing the United States to rally.

The success of the meeting on 2 April in London, including on topics deemed there are no untouchables (tax havens, "hedge funds" regulation, remuneration...), and the full participation of the new US administration, confirm the validity of the European initiative. Of course, the personal sensitivity of Barack Obama and his Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner, the AIG bonus scandal, the crusade of the authorities, us against Swiss banking secrecy, and more generally the outrage of Main Street to the carelessness of Wall Street are not foreign to the accession of Washington to this regulatory agenda. But there is more to transatlantic divorce on the need to review the regulation of the global financial system.

The perception of the crisis is not identical in the United States and Europe, including in France. "Against what are your countrymen" me am I often heard request in the two months I just move across the Atlantic. "But do you not have a particularly protective social safety net." Paradoxically, while the effects of the crisis are severely felt in the United States, public sentiment is much more positive than in the old Europe. The "Obama effect" was a great antidote to the economic and social depression, and some sectors favoured by the stimulus of the new administration plan are even struggling to manage the budgetary resources allocated to them. More fundamentally, the challenge of the market economy, the "Refoundation of capitalism" is not the order of the day. It instead to restart as soon as possible economic machine, which is given priority to the recovery on regulatory reform plan, or even on the cleaning of the balance sheet of banks, and to do so quickly and, putting the package. It would seem that this strategy began to pay.

Of course, the use of the major means did not exclude development under federal Trusteeship of many financial institutions, or even of quasi-nationalisations, or even dismissal "at the French" of the CEO of General Motors. But major disruptions in the market, massive state intervention to curb them and restore normal operation as quickly as possible. Void atmosphere great evening, therefore, in the first 100 days of the Obama administration.

Europeans were thus correct launch the regulatory site without waiting for the recovery because, even at the height of the crisis, the factual content of one debate in the United States. Beyond trust instinctive in the freedom of enterprise as essential to the recession, it is clear that the overshooting regulatory resulting from early 2000 Enron scandal has left traces: the famous Sarbanes-Oxley legislation has indeed seriously affected their competitiveness to new Asian markets and the attractiveness of us financial markets and European. Future regulatory reform will therefore aim to correct excessive past and to best prevent new, but avoiding harm to the growth and employment, as well as the international competitiveness of the United States. It will also be specifically American subjects.

Regardless of the sustainability of the current rally, as provided for in the IMF and as in the usual, America will emerge from the crisis before Europe, and will benefit the crossing its catch (or resume the advance) in the fields of the future: education, health, energy and environment, infrastructure, digital economy...

Rather than deplore the apparent blindness to us on the evils of capitalism, the Europeans would be better to consider on their own inability, as great and no doubt more serious, to draw lessons from the crisis from the point of view of European construction. Is it reasonable that a shock of this magnitude would have no impact on the means and procedures for crisis management at the level of the Union, or on the role and powers of the Commission That the upcoming European elections remain dominated by national political cuisine without common measure with issues The crisis will benefit in Europe that extremism and populism First verdict, unfortunately predictable, next month...