September 1, 2008 (LPAC)--The head of the French Socialist Party has called for a "new Bretton Woods conference" to deal with the systemic collapse of the financial system. "We must understand the full dimension of this crisis," stressed French Socialist Party First Secretary François Hollande, in his closing speech at the Socialists' annual La Rochelle summer academy this weekend. "We must not underestimate this crisis, as the right wing has done for the last year, merely because it confirms the failure of its policies," he insisted, after describing its "multiple facets": The crisis started as a financial crisis born with the subprimes, he said, but then contaminated the entire system, becoming a monetary crisis, and is now an economic crisis because it has induced an economic recession.

Hollande then expanded on the food and the real estate dimensions. "It is a general crisis," he stressed, a "global crisis of globalized capitalism which is hitting hard with all its dimensions. The chaos we are living through is the consequence of political choices: deregulation of the markets, financialization of the economy, disengagement of public authorities, privatization, setting up competition among public sectors."

The "time for regulation," the "time for law" has come he said, outlining a series of necessary measures: 1) organization of an international conference on financial and monetary matters, which could move towards the implementation of a "new Bretton Woods," aimed at "coordinating monetary policies and regulating the financial system," in order to deal with a "general, a global crisis, which is hitting all continents." This conference would allow ensuring "the stability of the euro/dollar parities" said Hollande, who called for "reinforcement of the international financial institutions and of the control mechanisms of central banks"; 2) support for agricultural production in the developing sector and reforming the Common Agricultural Policy going in the right direction; 3) a plan for the development of alternative energies.

On the national level, François Hollande called for 1) improvement of competitiveness of the French economy insisting that a mere incentives plan which does not deal with improving production, will not do the job. He proposed a series of measures to help the high- technology small and medium-sized industries, as well as a plan for large infrastructure projects, as joint projects of the national and regional governments.