法国为什么输给了德国

    20世纪80年代，我曾以《财富》法国分社社长（Fortune）的身份在巴黎生活了八年。在这期间，我曾报道过一位著名的首席执行官（在法国叫PDG），后者以讥讽本国的商业哲学为乐。这位通晓法国工业史的高管曾诙谐地说：“英国人完成了工业革命。法国人却只会说，他们完成的是口头革命。”

    现在，许多人都在议论法国。但有些人的话与实际情况不符。法国的现状，从极高的失业率到普遍存在的低迷，正是经济陷入困境的真实写照。然而，有些专家却想让人们相信，法国的情况还不错，而且会变得更好。

    具体来说，我指的就是《纽约时报》（New York Times）专栏作家、诺贝尔经济学奖获得者保罗•克鲁格曼。克鲁格曼教授认为，法国目前的发展道路既有勇气又有见识，堪称竞争对手的楷模。对此我们应该问一问，法国年轻人中那25%的失业者是否赞同他的观点。

    克鲁格曼教授在周一的《纽约时报》专栏文章中阐述了上述观点，文章的题目叫《针对法国的阴谋》（The Plot Against France）。它让我特别感兴趣的原因是，克鲁格曼教授对我在1月份发表的文章提出了批评，那篇文章的题目是《无人提及的欧元危机：自由落体的法国》（The euro crisis no one is talking about: France is in free fall）。他说这是“无休止唱衰法国”的行径之一。

    克鲁格曼教授认为，批评者为法国提出的紧缩方案并不明智——这类方案主要涉及削减开支，放松管制。他指出，这样的措施已经在其他国家惨淡收场。克鲁格曼教授认为，法国现在的做法完全正确，比如保持高水平的政府开支，无视赤字，选择增加税收而不是削减开支。他的结论是， 外界批评法国的原因是，“它对财政负责，而这是不可饶恕的罪行”，而且法国的“情况和大多数邻国相同，甚至更好”。

    我在自己的那篇文章中强调，近几年法国的竞争力急剧减弱，出口因此大幅下降，这让法国在这些年一直处于低增长态。和克鲁格曼教授的观点相反，我认为衡量法国经济走势的基准不应该是希腊、葡萄牙和西班牙，而应该是德国、美国和一些亚洲国家。它们既是法国的最大消费者，也是它在全球贸易市场上的对手。德国是法国的最大贸易伙伴国，把法国过去几年的表现和它对比能让人深受启发。

    While living in Paris as Fortune's bureau chief for eight years in the 1980s, I wrote a piece on a prominent CEO (or PDG en Francais) who liked to skewer his nation's philosophy of business. "The British had the industrial revolution," quipped this connoisseur of industrial history. "The French just talked. They had the verbal revolution."

    Today a lot of outsiders are talking about France. But some of the rhetoric doesn't adhere to the facts. Everything about France now, from the huge jobless rate to the widespread malaise, defines an economy in crisis. However, certain pundits would have you believe that things are just fine and poised to get better.

    Specifically, I'm referring to New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. It's worth asking if the 25% of young people who can't find jobs in France would agree with Professor Krugman's view that France is following a courageous, enlightened course that should be a model for competing nations.

    He presented his views on Monday in a Times column headlined "The Plot Against France." I took a special interest in the piece because Krugman criticized a story I wrote here in January, titled "The euro crisis no one is talking about: France is in free fall." He lumped it in as part of a campaign of "incessant negative propaganda."

    Krugman brands France's critics as folks who are unwisely promoting an agenda of austerity -- chiefly spending cuts and deregulation -- that, he argues, has miserably failed in other countries. For Krugman, France is doing just the right thing by keeping government spending at high levels, ignoring deficits, and favoring tax increases over reductions in spending. He concludes that France is being vilified for "the unforgivable sin of being fiscally responsible" and is "performing as well or better than most of its neighbors."

    My story emphasized France's dramatic loss of competitiveness over the past several years, causing a severe drop in its exports and, as a consequence, years of sluggish growth. Contrary to Krugman's argument, the benchmark for France's performance shouldn't be Greece, Portugal, and Spain, but Germany, the U.S., and the Asian nations that are both its biggest customers and rivals in world trade. It's highly instructive to compare France's performance over the past several years with that of its biggest trading partner, Germany.