Dominique Strauss Kahn

Strauss-kahn is a French economist, lawyer and politician, a member of the French social democratic Socialist Party, and a former French finance minister and the 10th managing director of the International Monetary Fund. He is currently the Managing Partner of Parnasse International. He was first elected to parliament in 1986 as a member of the Socialist Party and quickly showed his talent in economic and financial affairs. In 1991, then-President Francois Mitterrand appointed Strauss-Kahn as France's minister of industry and domestic trade. Six years later, the Socialist Party won the general election and France entered the Chirac era, and Strauss-Kahn was appointed by then Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin as France's finance minister, becoming the most influential minister. To bolster state coffers, Mr. Strauss-kahn championed privatization and pushed through initial public offerings of major companies, including France Telecom and Air France. Mr Strauss-kahn presided over a period of remarkable economic success, with huge growth in gross domestic product and falling unemployment and fiscal deficits. In particular, his measures led to the creation of 300,000 jobs in 1998, the highest level of the French job market in nearly 30 years. Mr Strauss-kahn is also widely praised for correctly tightening France's budget before the euro was adopted as the eurozone's common currency. At the Bordeaux Mint in southwestern France, Strauss-Kahn, then France's finance minister, personally started the mint machine to produce the first euro coin. This is undoubtedly the best page of Mr Strauss-kahn's personal political career. As finance minister from 1997 to 1999, the French economy was one of the fastest growing in the European Union, and he won praise for his pre-euro budget tightening in France. That may be one reason why Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, backed Mr Strauss-kahn for the IMF job. Mr Strauss-kahn deserves a lot of credit for the euro's success, because he managed to keep France's budget deficit under control. Since then, Mr Strauss-kahn has been active in efforts to strengthen political co-operation across the eurozone. When the euro was launched in early 1999, the sovereigns complained about the loss of monetary power. The then French finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, replied that no, post-war monetary power was in the hands of the United States, and after the euro was launched, we would work with our European partners to regain monetary sovereignty. After Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as French finance minister in 1999, the Financial Times declared that the euro zone had lost one of its most influential policymakers. With Mr Strauss-kahn gone, it is not clear who will be able to assume leadership. From 2000 to 2007 he taught economics at Sciences Po in Paris. Richard Guan, president of Sciences Po in Paris and president of the French National Foundation for Political Science, also spoke highly of Strauss-Kahn, saying that Strauss-Kahn is a very experienced politician who has built a wide range of contacts around the world.