August 29, 2014
A Morning Edition report on French President Francois Hollande’s decision to reshuffle his cabinet and eliminate members who complained about the cutbacks in government spending that are slowing growth and destroying jobs, treated him as a potential hero for trying to restructure France’s labor market. This coverage directly contradicts economics, since there is no plausible story whereby the economic gains from whatever restructuring Mr. Hollande is able to engineer will be more than a small fraction of the losses it is incurring due to austerity being imposed by Germany on the whole euro zone. This austerity will have cost France several trillion dollars in lost output by the end of the decade.
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