As  reported in The Financial Times, with embellishment, the words of  the Jupertarian Macron reduced to political beggary:   ‘ They were the words his supporters were longing to hear: “People of France, help me.” Where are these supporters?  at least in  the Anglophone World publications like the Economist, The Financial Times, The London Times, The Wall Street Journal , Bloomberg  and other Neo-Liberal publications saw him as the new hope for the French State enmeshed  in a benighted Socialism, that has become sclerotic.  One could not miss the Vanity Fair long interview/hagiography  of Macron, as it editors sought to make Macron and his administration the New Camelot. Presided over by Macron and his wife Brigitte as representatives of a French Renewal and their commitment to be  patrons of the Arts.

Headline: Macron’s struggle to reboot his flagging presidency

Sub-headline: French leader hopes for lift from reform programme but scepticism persists

October 5, 2018

On a visit to French territories in the Caribbean last month, President Emmanuel Macron came down from his Olympian heights and tried to reconnect with an increasingly dismissive public.

https://www.ft.com/content/5924fcb2-c87a-11e8-ba8f-ee390057b8c9

The Financial Times has been, in fact,  from the beginning of the political career of Macron  been the propaganda headquaters for him in the Anglophone World . That ‘dismissive public’ mentioned in the above quotation,  began with a near 37% of voters in the final election rendering their ballots uncountable!

Macron’s ill fated ‘Revolution’ was dealt another rebuff, if that is the proper descriptor,   from one of his Minister’s ‘walk out‘:

Mr Macron was dealt a more serious blow a few days later when Gérard Collomb, his interior minister, walked out of the government, publicly rebuffing the president’s appeals for him to stay. It was the third ministerial departure in as many months.

But this anonymous true believer in Macron and his Retrograde Revolution opines:

“The French are impatient,” said one official. “They want results. They believed in Emmanuel Macron. They still do. But they are questioning us. They still know the status quo is not sustainable. But they want to know whether it will pay off. There would be nothing worse at this stage than to water things down.”

Just ‘who’ believed in Macron? The 37% of voters who rendered their ballots uncountable?  Since  this is The Financial Times, and its defense of  Neo-Liberalism’s ‘Free Market’ merde is an article of Faith to a  rapacious Corporatist agenda.

The government is planning to forge ahead with the next wave of the reform programme. After loosening rules on redundancies and overhauling the state railways, it wants to cut the cost of a generous unemployment insurance system and create more incentives for the jobless to take up work.

It has plans to make the pension system fairer and has embarked on a shake-up of benefits and services to lift more people out of poverty. A bill in parliament contains scores of measures to make it easier to run a business. Its overall impact on growth may be modest but it should lift competitiveness with no cost to the Treasury, according to senior officials.

There is much more to be said about this essay,but this ‘crisis’ demands to be presented in its various dimensions at The Financial Times and other sources. But first we must read The Financial Times editorial on the ‘necessity of Macron’:

Headline: French malaise and why Macron’s reforms matter

Sub-headline: The president’s popularity is waning but he must stick to his economic plans

Emmanuel Macron conveys a vigour and charm that has won him many admirers abroad. Unfortunately for the French president, that is doing little to help at home where he is increasingly unpopular.

Sixteen months after he was swept into the Elysée Palace at the head of the centrist En Marche movement, his ratings in the opinion polls are plunging. Only 29 or so per cent of his compatriots support him. Moreover, those numbers are not the only ones pointing in the wrong direction, intensifying concern about the sustainability of his reformist project.

In a short space of time, Mr Macron has achieved far more than his two predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, who at this stage in their terms were faring better in the opinion polls. He has faced down opposition to push through pro-business reforms. Despite his political travails, he remains unequivocal in his ambition to wean France off its dependence on government spending, and create an economy that is more dynamic and entrepreneurial.

To this end he is rendering the labour market more flexible. He is in the process of shaking up the tax system, shrinking the government’s imprint on the economy and shifting the burden of taxation away from private economic activity. The government has also loosened state control of the SNCF, the railway company, and begun modernising and decentralizing an overly rigid education system — all with a view to stirring the French from their malaise.

https://www.ft.com/content/2d312e90-c187-11e8-95b1-d36dfef1b89a

There is no ‘French malaise’ but the contempt of the electorate for Macron, as demonstrated by the 36.5% of voters, who rendered their votes un-countable in the general election. And the utter failure of Macron and his Jupertarian Politics, read this as Rule by Decree, in sum, Authoritarianism:  that seeks to put France into the Neo-Liberal coterie of nations, mired in the aftermath of the collapse of the Free Market Dogmas. The Financial Times’ Free Market Ideology  dictates that the problem must lie elsewhere, than in the Neo-Liberal Swindle itself i.e. the fictional notion of ‘French malaise’ !

Headline:Emmanuel Macron’s political problems mask progress on reform

Sub-headline : But the French president still faces big challenges, especially on public spending

https://www.ft.com/content/86784ddc-ce2d-11e8-8d0b-a6539b949662

Philipp Hildebrand  ‘The writer is vice-chairman of BlackRock and a former chairman of the governing board of the Swiss National Bank‘ : There is no progress on ‘reform’ but just the further erosion of the Welfare State, i.e. the devil of ‘public spending’ in the Free Market Mythology. Dull-witted pamphleteer Ayn Rand called it the Darwinian conflict between The Producers and The Drones .The very target of Macron’s Neo-Liberal agenda are The Drones, and the State they made for themselves! ‘BlackRock vice-chairman’  M. Hildebrand is just the apologist/propagandist of the moment.  BlackRock ‘an American global investment management corporation’ is really the only explanation needed for a defender of the ‘reforms’ of Macron! In the world view of Hayek, M. Hildebrand  and Macron, the ‘values of the Market’ are/is the sine qua non of the human endeavor.

Almost Marx