Full left turn!

After being elected president of France, François Hollande has now a solid majority in the Senate and at the Assembly. He'll be able to run the country and carry-out his promised reforms without any political impediment and of course, no excuse whatsoever. The tone of his mandate is likely to be “socialist-plus.”

Even if Hollande sees a need for slowing down his leftist rhetoric, he'll be surrounded by a crowd influencing and reinforcing his policies towards that direction. This of course won't help the European countries that are supporting belt-tightening policies and in particular won't earn him much cooperation from the Germans.

All political pundits agree that Hollande will have little margin to maneuver, which might ultimately choke his promises-laden policies. His only face-saving option will be to declare early in the game (read, now) that Sarkozy has spent all the money, cleaned-up the coffers, that his predecessor was very bad indeed, and that what he thought he could give the French, can't now be funded.

We'll see...