Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

25 high fat reasons why Americans outweigh the French

 

Business Week looked at 25 of the best-known chains in the U.S. and ranked them by calories. Check out the amazing high-fat slide show . 

Personally I was shocked to see how many calories could be squeezed into a taco SALAD. 

Cassoulet and couscous look pretty dietetic compared to this!

 

For Business Week's complete 25 photo food-porn slide show,, click here!

With the right preparation, even fish can be fattening!

Not Chinese food, too !

 

French university tuition averages 175 euros per year for a BA and 235 euros for a masters

 Attention bargain shoppers!  

Each university student costs French taxpayers 9132 euros on average per year, while tuition fees amount to only 175 euros for a bachelors and 235 euros for a masters. As a result, the number of foreign students--in particular from China--has been rising. In 1999 2000 Chinese students enrolled in French universities; this year it's 22,000! 

Jean-Pascal Gayant, writing in Le Monde, asks if it still makes sense to subsidize relatively affluent foreign students in a time of economic crisis. China has evolved. Perhaps France should too.

Don't count on French universities to be able to discuss this calmly and come up with a solution, he warns. Their budgets depend on the number of students, and they have no incentive to risk ruffling feathers by suggesting tuition hikes or quotas.  A former university vice-president, Gayant suggests that it may be time for law makers to get involved in order to preserve the tradition of welcoming foreign students in universities that have become "Chinese auberges"*.

*"Il est donc opportun que le législateur s'empare de cette question et que la tradition d'accueil d'étudiants étrangers en France ne soit pas remise en cause, à terme, par les errements d'une Université devenue auberge chinoise…"

Goldman Helped Greece Commit Financial Suicide, Euro under Attack, French banks exposed

 From the New York Times:

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts...  

"As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of theAmerican International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere....

"In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come....

"For all the benefits of uniting Europe with one currency, the birth of the euro came with an original sin: countries like Italy and Greece entered the monetary union with bigger deficits than the ones permitted under the treaty that created the currency. Rather than raise taxes or reduce spending, however, these governments artificially reduced their deficits with derivatives."

via www.nytimes.com

According the The Guardian:

" France and Switzerland have more exposure to Greek debt than any other countries in the world, and more than twice as much as Germany – perhaps adding fuel to the hesitance of the Germans to help bail out the troubled country.

"France and Switzerland have $79bn (£50bn) each of exposure toGreece, according to American-sourced data from the Bank for International Settlements analysed by the Swiss bank UBS. Germany's exposure is $43bn...

"French bankers were trying to allay fears of the impact of a default by Greece on the French banking system earlier today. "It's not a particular issue at all for the French banks," Baudouin Prot, chief executive of BNP Paribas, said."

Oink oink bonus update AIG

“A.I.G. has taxpayers over a barrel,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, in a statement on Tuesday night. “The Obama administration has been outmaneuvered. And the closed-door negotiations just add to the skepticism that the taxpayers will ever get the upper hand.”

via www.nytimes.com

Oink Oink Bankers' Bonuses - Goldman CEO May Get $100 Million Bonus: Report - CNBC

The CEO of Goldman Sachs could get a bumper bonus of up to $100 million for 2009, London newspaper The Times reported Monday, quoting bankers in Davos, Switzerland. Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman Sachs bankers were set to receive the biggest ever bonuses awarded at the world's richest investment bank, according to the bankers. 

via www.cnbc.com

Is Apple IPAD for women only?

Amazon Pulls Macmillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement

 Could France be right about regulating powerful American internet companies?

In a stunning show of muscle, Amazon removed all of MacMillan's books from its store.

A major US publisher, MacMillan wanted to set the price of its books at around 15 dollars, 50% more than Amazon's standard Kindle price of 9.99 dollars.

Amazon responded by pulling all of MacMillan's books from the world's largest electronic bookstore.

How will this play out? Will Apple's new IPAD  reader change the game ? 

Who has the right to set book prices? The publisher? The distributor? The market? The state? How will this affect authors?  It's a whole new world...

See NYT article here.

Has Claude ALLEGRE lost his mind? Former minister attacks French ecologist icon

When Claude Allègre famously called France's Education Nationale a "mammoth", I applauded. Minister of Education at the time, he knew what he was talking about and wasn't afraid to speak his mind.

Of course, he flamed out quickly and thoroughly, and none of his proposed reforms came to pass, in part because he relished a fight more than results.

In the past few years, Monsieur Allègre has kept his name in the news by spouting off on the environment. Global warming is a sham! Ecologists got everything wrong. And now, most ridiculous of all, Nicolas Hulot is an imbecile!

But Nicolas Hulot, one of the most productive forces behind the fledgling French ecological movement, is, as anyone who has seen him speak knows, far from idiocy. Stardom is a two-edged sword, but he has used it well, steadily pushing a pragmatic ecological agenda.

All this inflammatory nonsense is actually designed to sell books.  (Not unlike Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s pathetic attempt to capitalize on curiosity about dead princesses.)

Why does Allègre stoop to vile name-calling like a snot-nosed kid ?

Because President Sarkozy did not call.  After painful months of cursing a silent phone, Allègre took matters into his own hands.

Global warming is a fraud! Nicolas Hulot is an imbecile! And Claude Allègre is an honorable man.

French court rules no one responsible for explosion that killed 31, wounded 2500 and caused 2 bn euros of material damages ten days after 911

The dead factory worker wore five layers of underclothing (like a Muslim suicide bomber) and had ties to Islamist groups.

Yet France's highest officials declared the AZF chemical plant explosion in Toulouse to be an "accident" only three days after the catastrophe caused 31 deaths, 2500 injuries and 2 billion euros of property damages. Before the investigation got underway. Ten days after 911.

 For exploring the Islamist ties of a temporary worker of Tunisian origin killed in the explosion, Le Figaro and Valeurs Actuelleswere charged with "diffamation.

French intelligence services saw their investigatons stopped.

And while an "accident" was the official thesis from the start, no reconstitution of events or hypothetical chain of events was able to recreate the explosion.

Now, eight years later, a French court has ruled to aquit AZF's directors  (a Total subsidiary)  of any responsibility for the  explosion.

Raison d'état is a familiar concept in France, and one which feeds the unhealthy French love of conspiracy theories.

But this time, the French state may have gone too far: to decree a lethal explosion an "accident", and then to hold no one responsible?  

For readers interested in exploring this topic, I will be posting links to books and articles. Check this space for more. Here is the very complete wikipedia entry in French.

My French woman, myself : five great ideas for losing weight

Mireille Guiliano's best seller French Women Don't Get Fat hit a raw (and plump) American nerve. Lucky French women! What's their secret?

Some insist that speaking French correctly is so hard that it burns extra calories. Others believe in the magic of red wine. And, of course, French women smoke, but it would be irresponsible to mention that, so better not.

Guiliano herself published a French Women's Manifesto which claims that French women eat three meals a day (basically true), that they care about looks, both their own and their food's (true) and that they don't diet (absolutely false). She also maintains that French women "are individuals and don't follow mass movement". (The guys in Mad Men couldn't have put it better.) .

But what if you are not a French woman? What then?

With eatfests Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Years bearing down on us like a drunken 18 wheeler, evasive action is needed, now!    Here's my modest contribution...

FIVE WEIGHTLOSS STRATEGIES BY VERITABLE EXPERTS

1. The first, of course, is to become a French woman, not from the north, (where sadly they're as fat as Americans) but from Paris, where nervous ladies with the racy look of greyhounds, rush about on cruelly elegant high heels -- from kids to husband to work to garage (to get the car fixed) to grocery store, to psychiatrist to herbalist to lover to garage (to pick up the car) to kids and husband and dishes and laundry and sleeping pills and -- merde!, time to get up again! (Diet may not be the sole explanation for their svelte looks.)

2 . Change just one thing! Peter Bregman, blogging on Harvard Business Review's site, reveals that all diets have one thing in common: reduction of calorie intake. His solution: go simple. Figure out which single action will have the most impact and do that, just that. In his case, he cut out sugar. And lost 18 pounds. (see To Change Effectively, Change just one Thing)

3. Get really sick. Flu, malaria, dysentery--options are many! For that pale, Kate Moss look, nothing beats disease.

4. Give your food to your spouse. Or, lacking that, your dog. As they say, one woman's loss is another man's gain!

5. Eat only vegetables for dinner. No-one actually likes vegetables, though even the president of the United States cannot admit this (except for broccoli)

 Zucchini, cabbage, cauliflower, beets, green beans, carrots--I've cooked them all with love and my family still acts like it's doing me a favor to choke them down. Don't fight it! use it! From now on, dinner is Herbevore Delight.