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Only the French Would Be Smug About the Recession
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Right now, they're rubbing their hands with glee over the wretched state of the American and British economies.
There is nothing more annoying than watching the French win. In 1998, when they took the coveted World Cup in soccer against Brazil, the worst part of the victory was watching them gloat.
As everyone accepts, the French excel in cheese, wine, foie gras—and schadenfreude. But how they envy our success in everything else. How they delighted in the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Not in a good way, but simply because it meant that America and Britain were proved wrong.
Right now they are rubbing their hands with glee over the wretched state of the American and British economies. Last month, to the delight of everyone, the French finance minister Christine La Garde announced “surprising” figures.
If one more person tells me at a dinner party that it’s our own “Anglo Saxon fault” for living on credit, I shall scream.
While Britain and Germany’s economy shrunk by 0.5 percent, and Italy and Spain were hitting the skids, the French economy had actually grown 0.1 percent in the 3rd quarter.
This news handed the French a license to be smug. They have always touted their outdated views that their quasi-socialist economy out performs free market capitalist countries like America and Britain. But the news of the global recession everywhere but France has really bolstered their egos.
If one more person tells me at a dinner party that it’s our own “Anglo Saxon fault” for living on credit, I shall scream.
No one lives on credit in France because banks don’t allow overdrafts and zero percent credit cards do not exist. It is a well known urban myth that the French don’t trust banks and store their money under their mattress. It’s not that they are tight with money—they just don’t trust anyone. Perhaps this time they were right.
Worse, the financial crisis plays into their “Armageddon is imminent” theories. They have been predicting “the fall of America” for years, in the way that Gibbon described the fall of Rome. After the ghastly poet/statesman Dominique de Villepin stood up at the United Nations and blew Colin Powell and his vial of fake anthrax out the window, that tendency got far worse.
The fact that the British press reports nearly two million unemployed by Christmas and that high street retailers in Britain are begging for customers to spend some money seems to delight rather than horrify the French. They seem to think hard times will never happen in Paris. (One Frankfurt based analyst, however, said it is only a matter of time till the recession reaches France).
Their smugness goes hand in hand with their civil servant mentality. Due to strict employment law, you can’t lose your job in France unless you burn down your workplace or assassinate the Prime Minister. This means that the lazy, insolent functionnaire mentality prevails rather than a hard-working energetic one.
In America, people know there are always 10 people better than them who are after their job. In France, they know that too—but no one is going to get their job till they go to their grave.
For now, the recession, which has plunged Britain and America into gloom, has yet to hit France. The fact that their economy has gone marginally up rather than down, in fact, has lulled them into a false sense of security. Le Garde was right about consumer spending—people are shopping like mad.
Paris is in the midst of its pre-Christmas sales, and as far as I can see, people are not holding back. Last week Lanvin, the French couture house favored by Hollywood celebrities, gave a private sale and I stood in the midst of hysterical women clamoring for fur coats. Fur coats? In the midst of the global meltdown?
So this week, I began casually observing French spending habits. While my American and London friends have given up cigarettes and vacations, and some of them are losing their homes and jobs, I watch the French in action. Standing in line to buy a Christmas tree on Boulevard Raspail, I was shocked to see people forking over 150 Euros ($200) for a bit of greenery.
In the food market of Le Bon Marche, possibly one of the most expensive food shops in the world next to Harrods in London, people load their chariots with hunks of foie gras, dark chocolate truffles and bottle after bottle of Tattinger champagne. So much for cutting back.
Even in Monoprix, the more humble food market, no one seemed to be comparing prices or holding back on buying anything. I watched one man loading a groaning cart with gilt edged paper goblets and plates, clearly preparing for a fête. In New York and London, all the Christmas parties I knew of have been cancelled.
I would not mind any of this if the French did not keep harping on with malicious glee about how tough things are across the Atlantic. “I’m just not feeling it,” said Virgine, a photographer’s agent. “In fact, no one I know is”. Yet.
My friend Jean Marc, a French journalist, reckons it’s an innate jealousy the French have towards the Americans and Brits because of the valiant way they behaved during World War Two, when the liberated France from Nazi tyranny.
“We could never have done that,” he says. “We caved in the moment the Germans arrived.” The British ability to maintain a stiff upper lip during the worse of times has long drive the overly passionate Gauls mad with jealousy.
But I am not harboring a secret desire that the recession arrives on my Parisian doorstep. For the moment, the strong Euro suits me fine. I plan on spending the pre-Christmas season freeloading off French friends, eating their foie gras, and drinking their champagne. Just so long as it is they who buy.
Janine di Giovanni reported conflict and war for nearly two decades for the Sunday Times and the Times of London. She won four journalistic awards including the National magazine Award for the war in Kosovo. In 2004, she moved to Paris where she is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. The author of four books, she is currently writing a book for Knopf/Bloomsbury about Parisian life.
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What a great past time, bitching about the French! It's pretty fun. One correction, the US and GB are not free market capitalism. They're nowhere near as close as it needs to be. Both are as "quasi-socialist" as France
What is the point of this article? If she is tired of "Anglo Saxon" digs at dinner parties, why complain that most parties have been cancelled? If she's tired of the French, why doesn't she leave Paris? This whole article smacks of elitist whining. Sure, eat the foie gras that someone else paid for and then write a bitchy column about them. C'est domage.
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Cowardly, treacherous, envious, back-biting, -- ah, the French.
Oh please, if ever a people had a born right to smugness its the French, (they're thin, stylish and much nicer to their offspring) and if ever a people needed a much earned kick in the arrogant ass its US and the Brits (shrill, materialistic and overweight!).
Let them gloat in peace.
As a distributor of high end perfumes many of my customers, such as Lanvin, are French. They will be feeling it soon. Great job Ms. di Giovanni. By the way, I didn't hear any bitching. Maybe I read a different article.
I think that Janine perfectly depicted "la mentalite francaise". After all what is Noel without foie gras and champagne? Even when struggling, no decent francais(e) would be without it in December. And lest you forget, the French are professionals when it comes to complaining.
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Ho ho ho or should I say oh la la - the Brits may very well need the proverbial kick up the arse (not ass !). Good luck to the French - let them have their cake .... and eat it! They should just be careful they don't choke on it.
@liviapeacock
I totally agree. Besides, America has been whining about the French for years, and the Brits even longer than that. If they can afford to keep drinking champagne and eating gross animal parts, let them. The smugness has always been there, it`s just now that our economy is in the tank that we see how good they think they`ve got it.
This article may be the most idiotic one I've read on this web site. Does the Daily Beast not employ a fact checker? Apparently not, or the claim that "No one lives on credit in France because banks don't allow overdrafts and zero percent credit cards do not exist." would not have been published... as both do.
And perhaps the editor might like to point out to Ms. di Giovanni that using "a well known urban myth" to bolster her sloppy evidence is grotesque.
Oh, and the absurd "we caved in the moment the Germans arrived"... Operation Dynamo, anyone? Don't know what it is? Thank you for proving my point.
Shocking that an upper class American woman living abroad would NOT want to hear about the error of her ways.
The French Credit system is a million times better and ushers more responsibility then our system. Yes, they dont get fired from their jobs for no reason. Yes, they get free heath and paid vacations for at least 1 month a year...it's all true.
But jeazus if another American woman sterotypes the French into one huge foie gras consuming pulsing mass...
How's the champagne in Bondy? or Rosny sus Bois? The caviear delightful once you step off the suburb train?
Get out of Paris and you might find the smugness evaporate exponentially.
Much like if you leave New York you rarley see a Jimmy Choo.
Actually no, sterotype. It's easier. Yawn.
what's France's unemployment rate? Yeah, that's right.
It stuns me to hear Americans complain about the French - and I hear it all the time. The American people are incredibly nationalistic, even jingoistic - we brag constantly about how much better we are than any other country and we tend to know nothing about other countries. When for example, the French refused to allow our military to fly over French so that we could bomb Libya we were furious. but anyone who had been in France would know they have a huge Arab population and, in the south in particular, a large amount of sea transportation between North Africa and ports in France. If they had allowed us, they would certainly have been subject to terrorist attacks all over the country.
The French weren't the only ones happy that we found no WMD. So were many Americans. In the newspapers running up to the invasion of Iraq, the inspectors were begging us not to attack, that they were being given more and more access. Bush and his other war lovers ignored them.
Is it just me or does the author come across as someone *anybody* would be happy to tweak? Yeah, I thought so.
My French friends say their feeling is more like a bullet has barely missed them today, but they know one will soon connect. it's coming and they can feel it.
Almost like the sound of German tanks across the meadow.
That hardly sounds smug.
Think back to 1774-77. Who was bailing us out?
Yeah, the French.
Enough with the idiotic French bashing already. Go eat your frickin' Freedom Fries.
Where do you do your research?
1.On October 3rd, the venerable Le Monde newspaper reported, front page, that France was in a recession...here's the link http://www.lemonde.fr/la-crise-financiere/article/2008/10/03/monsieur-je-sa i
2.There is overdraft bank protection in France. How do I know? I lived and worked in France for four years and had a bank account there with overdraft protection.
3.The French do have credit cards.
4.The French, in general, make less money than Americans and value saving their money - what's wrong with saving money? It seems that's a value any country/culture should encourage.
5.As for the French people you have been observing in France at Lanvin and La Grande Epicerie at Le Bon Marche - those stores are in very bourgeois/rich neighborhoods, filled with very bourgeois/rich French people who probably are not struggling as much as the average French person - the same parallel can be made in the U.S. and the U.K. Moreover, if you were in New York City you would observe that Bergdorf Goodman is not empty, neither is Barney's, or all of the stores on Madison Avenue - and these stores are not filled solely with tourists either.
6.You exaggerate - Christmas parties continue in New York and all over the world where people celebrate Christmas. I've been invited to four of them. There may be a global recession but people like an excuse to have a party whenever they can.
7.By the way, have you paid any attention to the fact that the euro has fallen in value? It's not where it was this time last year. The dollar is catching up to both the pound and the euro.
I am embarrassed to say that I not only read this "commentary" on the French, but also each of the subsequent posts. Keep it moving...
The French's argument on being "better than us" is as formidable as the Maginot Line, HA!
Mon dieu! Will 'freedom fries' now be replaced with 'recession fries"?
Do they not have editors at the daily beast? I know times are tough but every article I read here has at least two or three typos. Spell check doesn't catch everything.
@vollmers: I think you got it wrong. The French didn't allow us to fly over France to bomb Libya, because my goodness who could France be getting oil from? hmmm, hmm, hmmm. It had nothing to do with fear of terrorist attacks (you should check your timeline here on terrorist attacks and not use today's situation to back then) more than it had to do with commercial trade. the reason countries like France were happy we found no WMD's, although their intel services believed Iraq had them, was because of their forever oil contracts with Saddam's regime. There is always something arrogant about France preaching, and they do like to preach, when they maintain French Foreign Legion, whose purpose is to? Anyways, I digress. Besides, if the French didn't have the Americans to complain about, what would they do? Surely not work given the high unemployment levels. At least we got Lady Libert�, or was that the French sticking it to the Americans in a sarcastic way? After all, Americans get to look at her unshapely buttocks forever, while she looks longingly out to the sea awaiting her Napoleon, or at least a Gaullist, to rescue her.
I found Janine di Giovanni's article amusing.
Oh, to be French right now!
@MisterGoo
France's unemployment rate for the 3rd Quarter is 7.3%, while the US' is up to 6.5 % & expected to soar. How exactly does commenting twice on France's high unemployment rate prove that Ms. di Giovanni's theory about the French not being touched by the Worldwide Recession is founded on fact? Or are you simply imitating Joe the Plumber's brand of "Truthiness"?
"Think back to 1774-77. Who was bailing us out?
Yeah, the French."
Boy, I get tired of hearing this one. The French were engaged in geopolitical war with thr English. Whatever was good for them was bad for the French and vice versa. After the colonies gained their independence, the French joined with King George in an effort to strangle the infant Repubic in the crib. Read history and learn something.
Thank you.
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