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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (64434)	5/31/2005 3:59:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Re: 3) Technically bankrupt Alitalia is grounded for good Don't bet on it... You should keep in mind that Italy is not Belgium --Italy's one of the world's top touristic venues. Millions of tourists from all over the world flock each year to Rome, Firenze, Venice, Napoli, Sardegna, etc. That's a big asset for the Italian carrier. Re: Chronic unemployment I agree. This has been a constant for 30 years. Don’t forget the amount of pseudo jobs and government jobs... ...and the paucity of military pseudo-jobs. Keep in mind that, unlike the US, Europe doesn't maintain and splurge zillions of euros on a bloated, ubiquitous "Pentagon" bureaucracy... You won't find military guys in battle-dress on Europe's university campuses hustling undergraduates to sign on with the Army.... Re: It will be difficult for you to convincing me that the mass voted no due to Geopolitics. Let’s say that 55% that voted no, 1% did due to geopolitics. The 54% did because of internal issues: Economics 50% and 4% due to nationalistic views of losing the old “grandeur”. You missed my point. I too contend that the French voted "no" out of domestic/economic discontent... But you should ask yourself, WHY did President J. Chirac submit the EU Constitution to a referendum IN THE FIRST PLACE???? Keep in mind that Chirac is no rookie --he's past 70, he was Giscard's PM in the 1970s, then mayor of Paris for 20 years... He's got a perfect grasp of the French mindset, hence he knows that asking the French people about anything related to "loathsome Brussels", that pit of bureaucratic iniquity, will prove a provocative faux-pas or be counterproductive at best. You just don't ask/Never ask the French about "Brussels"!!! So it was a masterstroke by Chirac to call for a referendum as he certainly anticipated a French "no" yet postured all along as a pro-European president and urged his compatriots to vote "yes". However, as I said before, Chirac and the Gaullist elites resented Europe's hostility to France's geopolitics. They didn't forget the quasi-isolation of France on the eve of the Iraq War, the flak she got during the Ivory Coast crisis, even the scorn at France's official funeral of the late Yasser Arafat.... Now, it's always been a tradition of French politics not to lump foreign policy into "campaign politicking"... So, there was no way for President Chirac and his Gaullist guard to use geopolitics as a campaign tool, as a leverage to sway French public opinion --lest it exacerbate France's dissensions. Hence the strategy of using the constitution referendum as a roundabout way to make the EU understand that France is not to be dismissed as a geopolitical has-been, especially on issues involving war and peace. Gus