French strikes

In a very bizarre and questionable analysis of the present political situation in France, I find a number of interesting quotes :

"As has become standard practice, the authors of the neo-liberal reforms present them not as a choice but as a necessity. There is no alternative. We must compete on the global market. Do it our way or we go broke. And this reform was essentially dictated by the European Union, in a 2003 report, concluding that making people work longer was necessary to cut pension costs."

"... deindustrialization. In order to maintain the high profits drained by the financial sector, and avoid paying higher wages, one industry after another has moved its production to cheap labor countries. Profitable enterprises shut down as capital goes looking for even higher profit."

 “Export-led growth” cannot be a strategy for everyone. World prosperity actually depends on strengthening both domestic production and domestic markets. But this requires the sort of deliberate industrial policy which is banned by the bureaucracies of globalization: the World Trade Organization and the European Union. They operate on the dogmas of “comparative advantage” and “free competition”.

"Only the financiers can win this game. And if they lose, well, they just get more chips for another game from servile governments."

" ... there is a more formidable obstacle to basic change: the European Union. The EU, built on popular dreams of peaceful and prosperous united Europe, has turned into a mechanism of economic and social control on behalf of capital, and especially of financial capital."

Read : http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone10212010.html.

Read it at your own peril.  It looks to me like a very dogmatic leftist exercise or an outright provocation, and a little research teaches me that the authoress is a rather notorious character. But she offers a couple of valid insights anyway.