Sarkozy not making things cozy for hedgies

Ahh, the French. What other nationality is at once so seemingly cultured (but really pedantic) and boasts of its great philosophers while failing to see the practical errors of its ways? Now the French "conservative" white-horse riding "free-market" champion has declared war on what he calls "predatory hedge funds" although he is clearly describing a textbook private equity LBO in his interview.
Take heed of another famous French leader with a penchant for white stallions - when you attack a great power unprepared you perish. Might want to look at summer homes in Elba.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk If there is one thing that unites both candidates in France's presidential run-off this Sunday, it is a shared belief that Anglo Saxon hedge funds are the great villains of modern civilisation. "We can't tolerate hedge funds buying a company with debt, firing a quarter of the staff and then enriching themselves by selling it in pieces. We didn't create the euro to have capitalism without ethics or morals," he said. Mr Sarkozy is supposed to be the "free market" candidate. Sarkozy, the neo-Gaullist favourite, has vowed to "hit predators" with a tax on speculative investments "Of course, the French love to regulate and they believe in the supremacy of politics over reality, but it never works for all the hot rhetoric, France quietly hosts some 92 hedge funds - many of them on the cutting edge of arbitrage and structured products, and some linked to Mr Sarkozy's inner team of advisers.