Hollande in France

[ I apologize in advance for the political musings below. I usually don't touch politics with the proverbial 10-foot pole. But not always...]

Believe it or not, François Hollande, the French President-elect and Barack Obama are very close politically. Obviously, those who think President Obama is a "Socialist" won't have any problem believing it since Hollande's party happens to be ... the Socialist Party (note: the French Socialist Party has officially accepted that the market-based economy is the only workable kind a long time ago). But beyond labels, prejudices, local differences and all the emotional stuff, they are indeed very close on the political spectrum and not just on the economy as the New York Times opines:

Mr. Hollande seems “naturally more palatable to the administration,” said Justin Vaïsse, the director of research for the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. The administration seems to reason that “Europe probably has a better chance of avoiding a breakup or another renewed sovereign debt crisis by focusing on growth, rather than just sticking to austerity,” he said.

Whether gridlock (at the country as well as the European level) will prevent Hollande to actually enact much of his (still hazy, but that's a rather a good thing) program remains to be seen. French presidents (provided they win a parliamentary majority: results next month) generally have more leeway than U.S. ones but France, as a member of the E.U. - albeit the second most powerful member after Germany - is constrained by all sorts of E.U. treaties. It also happens that, on the economy, Mr. Hollande and Mrs. Merkel, the German Chancellor, have, shall we say, some serious differences. So, things should get even more "interesting" in Europe in the next few months. And markets should definitely be interesting too.

On a side note, don't let the misleading "Sarkozy the American" meme fool you into thinking the U.S. has just lost a blindly faithful ally in the hyperkinetic former French president. The America Sarkozy loved was basically the George W. Bush America and his repeated attempts at ingratiating himself with Obama had very mixed results. I expect President-elect Hollande will be a more reliable, consistent and stable U.S. ally in all that counts.