Former television journalist Anne Sinclair, also known as the wife of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been giving more details of a memoir she is preparing.

"/> Former television journalist Anne Sinclair, also known as the wife of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been giving more details of a memoir she is preparing.

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DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN

DSK wife to write family memoir

Former television journalist Anne Sinclair, also known as the wife of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been giving more details of a memoir she is preparing.

Published: 5 January 2012 13:54 CET

DSK wife to write family memoir

Anne Sinclair (November 2010) on Le Grand Journal by Canal +

L’Express magazine reported on Thursday that the book will be called 21, rue la Boétie.

The address in Paris’ wealthy 8th arrondissement was the location of an art gallery belonging to her grandfather, Paul Rosenberg.

Rosenberg was a gallery owner who also represented artists including Picasso, Braque and Matisse. He left Paris for the United States in 1940 to escape the Nazis and opened a gallery in New York.

The book will not be a “classic” biography, according to the magazine but, in Sinclair’s words, “research into my family archives, childhood memories, portraits and stories from Bordeaux, Paris and New York.”

Reports also circulated in December that Sinclair would be resuming her journalistic career by taking a top spot with the Huffington Post, which is set to launch in France.

The reports were neither confirmed nor denied by Arianna Huffington, the site’s founder, or Louis Dreyfus, president at Le Monde newspaper which is partnering with Huffington in the venture.

Sinclair has remained popular throughout her husband’s legal problems, ending the year by being named Woman of the Year in a poll by French women’s magazine Terrafemina.

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World unprepared for next financial crisis: ex-IMF chief Strauss-Kahn

Former French Economy Minister and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn , poses during a photo session in Paris on Thursday. Photo: JOEL SAGET / AFP

In an interview with AFP, the now-disgraced Strauss-Kahn — who ran the fund at the height of the 2008 financial meltdown — also said rising populism across the world is a direct result of the crisis.

Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the IMF in 2011 after being accused of attempted rape in New York, although the charges were later dropped. He settled a subsequent civil suit, reportedly with more than $1.5 million.

Q: When did you become aware that a big crisis was brewing?

A: When I joined the IMF on Nov 1, 2007, it became clear quite quickly that things were not going well. That is why in January 2008, in Davos, I made a statement that made a bit of noise, asking for a global stimulus package worth two percent of each country's GDP. In April 2008, during the IMF's spring meetings, we released the figure of $1,000 billion that banks needed for their recapitalisation.

Q: Did the Bush administration grasp the danger of Lehman Brothers going bankrupt?

A: No, and that is why Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson decided not to save Lehman, because he wanted to make an example of it in the name of moral hazard. Like everybody else, he considerably underestimated the consequences. Allowing Lehman to go under was a serious mistake. Especially because only a week later they were forced to save the insurer AIG, which was much bigger.

Q: Ten years on, are we better equipped to deal with a crisis of such a magnitude?

A: No. We have made some progress, particularly in the area of banks' capital adequacy ratios. But that is not nearly enough. Imagine Deutsche Bank suddenly finding itself in difficulty. The eight percent of capital it has at its disposal are not going to be enough to solve the problem. The truth is that we are less well prepared now. Regulations are insufficient.

Q: How so?

A: After 2012-2013 we stopped talking about the need to regulate the economy, for example concerning the size of banks, or concerning rating agencies. We backtracked, which is why I am pessimistic about our preparedness. We have a non-thinking attitude towards globalisation and that does not yield positive results.

Q: Do we still have international coordination?

A: Coordination is mostly gone. Nobody plays that role anymore. Not the IMF and not the EU, and the United States president's policies are not helping. As a result, the mechanism that was created at the G20, which was very helpful because it involved emerging countries, has fallen apart. Ten years ago, governments accepted leaving that role to the IMF. I'm not sure it is able to play it today, but the future will tell.

Q: Do you believe that Donald Trump's election is a consequence of the crisis?

A: I believe so. I'm not saying that there was a single reason for Trump's election, but today's political situation is not unconnected to the crisis we lived through, both in the US with Trump and in Europe.

Q: Connected how?

A: One of the consequences of the crisis has been completely underestimated, in my opinion: the populism that is appearing everywhere is the direct outcome of the crisis and of the way that it was handled after 2011/2012, by favouring solutions that were going to increase inequalities.

Quantitative easing (by which central banks inject liquidity into the banking system) was useful and welcome. But it is a policy that is basically designed to bail out the financial system, and therefore serves the richest people on the planet.

When there's a fire, firemen intervene and there is water everywhere. But then you need to mop up, which we didn't do. And because this water flowed into the pockets of some, and not of everyone, there was a surge in inequality.

By AFP's Antonio Rodriguez

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