Jacques Attali

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Jacques Attali (2010)

Jacques Attali (born November 1, 1943 in Algiers ) is a French economist , cultural philosopher, author and civil servant. He was a long-time advisor to French President François Mitterrand .

biography

Jacques Attali was born into a Jewish family with his twin brother Bernard. His father Simon ran a perfumery in Algiers. Before Algeria's independence, he moved with his family to Paris as a pied noir in 1957 . His twin brother Bernard was CEO of Air France as the crow flies from 1988 to 1993 . Both brothers attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly and were school friends of the French politicians Jean-Louis Bianco and Laurent Fabius . In 1968 Attali did an internship at the École nationale d'administration in the Nièvre department , where he met François Mitterrand for the first time.

Attali is a professor and doctor of economics and has degrees from the École polytechnique , the Mines ParisTech , the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration.

Political life

At the age of 27 Attali became a member of the French Council of State . In 1972 he published his first two books, Economic Analysis of Political Life and Political Models , and received the Academy of Sciences Prize .

As a professor at the University of Paris-Dauphine , he gathered a few young researchers around him: Yves Stourdzé , founder of the European research program EUREKA , or Erik Arnoult alias Érik Orsenna , winner of the Prix ​​Goncourt in 1988 and special advisor to Roland Dumas in the Foreign Ministry on the Quay d'Orsay . Attali knew how to gather very different high-ranking and equal personalities from journalism , science, show business and the financial world around him. He has excellent contacts with, for example, Raymond Barre , Jacques Delors , Jean-Luc Lagardère , Antoine Ribaud , Coluche and Michel Serres .

In 1973 Attali met François Mitterrand. When Mitterrand moved into the Elysée Palace in 1981, Attali became its special advisor. His friends Jean-Louis Bianco and Alain Boublil and several young ENA graduates such as François Hollande and Ségolène Royal also benefited from his appointment .

In 1982 Attali pleaded for economic rigor. He also had another job: Attali became Mitterrand's Sherpa for the G7 summit. He was the organizer of the bicentenary of the French Revolution on July 14, 1989 and the G7 summit in Paris .

Every year he published a book, often written very quickly. What was supposed to be a polemic became a repeated loan of quotations without quotation marks. Every Saturday evening during François Mitterrand's era, he organized a dinner at his house in Neuilly . Every evening he edited his note for the president on economics, culture , politics and the last books he had read or scanned.

During Mitterrand's second seven-year term, Attali left the Elysée Palace. He became President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London , an institution that coordinated reconstruction aid for the Eastern European countries. The record of his time in this post is very controversial. Attali was forced to step down from his presidency in July 1993 following a financial scandal.

Attali is president of a consulting company specializing in new technologies and founder of PlaNet Finance , an international non-profit organization against poverty .

Utterances

Attali is an advocate of European federalism and said in the 2011 discussion "Without federalism the euro will disappear":

“I tell you, Germany will be the 'sick man' in Europe in 20 years' time, because the weakness of a nation is measured by its demography and its ability to adopt long-term strategies. Germany does not have a long-term strategy. […] Rather, we should try to make it clear to our German friends that European federalism is in their own interest. If the crisis spreads, if Greece leaves the euro, if Spain and Italy do the same, then the euro would rise very high, it is already too strong, and Germany, which is oriented towards exports, would find itself in a tragic situation. "

In 2013 he repeated his remarks and stated that the low German unemployment rate was "a joke when people work for five euros an hour". The German banking system is bankrupt and Germany is "an obsolete country with catastrophic elementary schools and falling productivity because most export products are currently being copied". He also said: “The country has to be in such a good situation today and save money in order to make ends meet later. Germany's future will be tricky with such a low birth rate. "

Publications

Attali has written more than thirty books to date, including essays, novels, historical treatises and biographies ( Karl Marx , François Mitterrand). He has also written plays and short stories for children and works as a columnist for L'Express magazine .

Fonts (selection)

  • Sigmund Warburg, un homme d'influence . Fayard, Paris 1985.
  • The cannibalistic order. From magic to computer medicine . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-593-32838-0 .
  • Blaise Pascal ou le génie français . Fayard, Paris 2000.
  • Jacques Attali: Noise. Essai sur l'économie politique de la musique. Paris 2001.
  • Karl Marx ou l'esprit du monde . Fayard, Paris 2005.
  • Gândhî ou l'éveil des humiliés . Fayard, Paris 2007.
  • The world of tomorrow: a little story of the future . Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-86601-027-3 .
  • Diderot ou le bonheur de penser . Fayard, Paris 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ France is on a dangerous path. (Translated) In: Euronews . July 19, 2011.
  2. ↑ Manfred Weber-Lamberdière: Hollande advisor: "Not France, Germany is the sick child of Europe". In: Focus online . November 29, 2013, accessed December 1, 2013 (interview).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Attali, Jacques
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French economist
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Algiers