Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn (French pronunciation: [dɔminik stʁos kan]; born 25 April 1949), often referred to in the media as DSK, is a French economist, lawyer, and politician, and a member of the Socialist Party of France (PS). A former Communist, Strauss-Kahn became the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 28 September 2007, with the backing of his country's president, Nicolas Sarkozy. He is a full professor of economics at the Paris Institute for Political Studies ("Sciences Po"). Strauss-Kahn was Minister of Economy and Finance from 1997 to 1999 as part of Lionel Jospin's "Plural Left" government. He belongs to the right wing of the PS (which is on the center-left of French politics) and sought the nomination in the primaries to the Socialist presidential candidacy for the 2007 election, but he was defeated by Ségolène Royal in November 2006. In May 2011, Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York City and charged with sexual assault, forcible confinement, and attempted rape of a maid who was cleaning his hotel room. He was refused bail and remanded to jail, with his next court appearance scheduled for 20 May. Strauss-Kahn did not enter a plea during the proceedings, although his lawyer has said he denies all charges.

Early Life

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was born in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine. He is the son of Gilbert Strauss-Kahn, a legal and tax advisor and member of the Grand Orient de France, and journalist Jacqueline Fellus. Strauss-Kahn's father was born to an Alsatian Jewish father and aCatholic mother from Lorraine; Strauss-Kahn's mother is from a Jewish family in Tunisia. The family settled in Agadir, Morocco, in 1951, but after the 1960 earthquake moved to Monaco, where he started his education. They then returned to Paris, where he attended high school at the Lycée Carnot. He graduated from HEC Paris in 1971 and from Sciences-Po in 1972. He sat for and failed the entrance examination for École nationale d'administration, but obtained a degree in public law, as well as a Ph.D. and an agrégation (1977) in economics at the Université Paris X (Nanterre).

Academic Career

In 1977, Strauss-Kahn became an academic, teaching at the University of Nancy-II (1977–1980), the University of Nanterre (after 1981) and the École nationale d'administration (ENA). He is full professor of Macroeconomics and Microeconomics at Sciences-Po. 

In 1971, he worked at the Centre de recherche sur l'épargne (Research Centre on Savings) alongside Paul Hermelin, who many years later (1991) was to become his chief of staff at the Ministry of Industry, and Denis Kessler, a future vice-president of the MEDEF employers' union. In 1982, Kessler became his teaching assistant in Nanterre, and co-authored L’Épargne et la Retraite ("Savings and Retirement") with him the same year. 

He came back to Sciences Po to teach the introductory economics course from 2000 to 2007.

Political Career

Strauss-Kahn was first an activist member of the Union of Communist Students, before joining in the 1970s the Centre d'études, de recherches et d'éducation socialiste (Center on Socialist Education Studies and Research, CERES) led by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, future presidential candidate for the 2002 election. There, he befriended the future Prime Minister of France Lionel Jospin (PS). 

After the election of President François Mitterrand (PS) in 1981, he decided to stay out of government. He got involved in the Socialist Party (PS), which was led by Lionel Jospin, and founded Socialisme et judaïsme ("Socialism and Judaism"). The next year, he was appointed to the Commissariat au plan (Planning Commission) as commissaire-adjoint. 

In 1986 he was elected deputy for the first time in the Haute-Savoie department, and in 1988 in the Val-d'Oise department. He became chairman of the National Assembly Committee on Finances, famously exchanging heated words with the Finance Minister Pierre Bérégovoy (PS).

Minister for Industry (1991–1993)

In 1991, he was nominated by Mitterrand to be Junior Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade in Édith Cresson's social-democrat government. He kept his position in Pierre Bérégovoy's government until the1993 general elections. After the electoral defeat of 1993, Strauss-Kahn was appointed by former Prime Minister Michel Rocard chairman of the groupe des experts du PS ("Group of Experts of the Socialist Party"), created byClaude Allègre. The same year, he founded the law firm "DSK Consultants" and worked as a business lawyer. In 1994, Raymond Lévy, who was director of Renault, invited him to join the Cercle de l’Industrie, a French industry lobby in Brussels, where he met the billionaire businessman Vincent Bolloré and top manager Louis Schweitzer; Strauss-Kahn served as secretary-general and later as vice-president. This lobbyist activity earned him criticism from the alter-globalization left. In June 1995, he was elected mayor of Sarcelles and married Anne Sinclair, a famous television journalist working for the private channel TF1 and in charge of a political show, Sept sur Sept. She ceased presenting this show after Strauss-Kahn's nomination as Minister of Economics and Finance in 1997 to avoid conflict of interest, while Strauss-Kahn himself would cede his place as mayor to François Pupponi in order to avoid double responsibilities.

Minister for Economics, Finances and Industry (1997–1999)

In 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (PS) appointed Strauss-Kahn as Minister for Economics, Finance and Industry, making him one of the most influential ministers in his Plural Left government. Although it was in theory contrary to the Socialist Party's electoral program, he implemented a wide privatization program, which included among others the IPO of France Télécom; he also implemented some deregulation policies in the research and development sector. The French economy achieved an excellent performance during his term of office: the GDP increased, whereas unemployment and public debt decreased (creation of 300,000 jobs in 1998, a level not seen since 1969). This helped to strengthen his popularity and managed to win the support of former supporters of Lionel Jospin and Michel Rocard, making him the leader of the reform-oriented group Socialisme et démocratie. Strauss-Kahn has been originally a proponent of the working time reduction to 35 hours, a measure implemented byMartine Aubry, Minister for Social Policies.

In 1998 he became one of the leaders of the Socialist Party for the regional elections in the Ile-de-France region (Paris and suburbs), which were won by the PS. But as Strauss-Kahn refused to exchange his ministry for the executive leadership of the Ile-de-France, Jean-Paul Huchon became the president of the regional council. In 1999, he was accused of corruption in two financial scandals related to Elf Aquitaine and the MNEF, a student mutual health insurance, and decided to resign from his ministerial office to fight these charges, in agreement with the "Balladur jurisprudence". He was replaced by Christian Sautter. He was acquitted in November 2001, and was reelected in a by-election in the Val-d'Oise. As Minister of Economics and Finance, Strauss-Kahn succeeded in decreasing VAT to 5.5% for renovation works in construction, thus supporting this activity. At the same time, he decreased the budget deficit, which was more than 3% of GDP under Alain Juppé's center-right government (1995–97). He thus prepared France's entrance in the euro zone. Strauss-Kahn also repealed the Thomas Act on hedge funds and launched the Conseil d'orientation des retraites (Orientation Council on Pensions). Strauss-Kahn succeeded in combining followers of Jospin and Rocard in the same political movement, Socialisme et démocratie, but failed to make it more than an informal network.

In the opposition

After Jacques Chirac's success in the 2002 presidential election and the following Union for a Popular Movement (UMP)'s majority in Parliament, Strauss-Kahn was reelected deputy on 16 June 2002, in the 8th circonscription of the Val-d'Oise. He first declined in taking part in the new leadership of the PS, then in the opposition, in the 2003 congress of the party. But he joined the party's leadership again at the end of 2004, and was given overall responsibility for drawing up the Socialist programme for the 2007 presidential election, along with Martine Aubry and Jack Lang. During the summer meeting of 2005, he announced that he would be a candidate for the primary elections of the Socialist Party for the presidential election.

At the same time, Strauss-Kahn co-founded the think tank À gauche en Europe (To the Left in Europe) along with Michel Rocard. He presided jointly with Jean-Christophe Cambadélis over the Socialisme et démocratie current in the PS. Strauss-Kahn was one of the first French politicians to enter the blogosphere; his blog became one of the most visited, along with Juppé's, during his stay in Quebec. Strauss-Kahn then campaigned for the "Yes" at the French European Constitution referendum, 2005. More than 54% of the French citizens refused it, damaging Strauss-Kahn's position inside the PS,^{[citation needed]} while left-wing Laurent Fabius, who had campaigned for a "No" vote, was reinforced.^{[citation needed]} Strauss-Kahn sought the nomination for the Socialist candidacy in the 2007 presidential election. His challengers were former prime minister Laurent Fabius and Ségolène Royal, the president of the Poitou-Charentes region. Strauss-Kahn finished second, behind Royal. On 13 April 2007, Strauss-Kahn called for an "anti-Sarkozy front" between the two rounds of the forthcoming presidential election. Following Ségolène Royal's defeat, Strauss-Kahn criticized the PS's strategy and its chairman, François Hollande. Along with Fabius, he then resigned from the party's national directorate in June 2007. Strauss-Kahn had been widely expected to seek the Socialist nomination for President of France in 2012, and was considered an early favorite.

IMF Managing Director (2007–present)

On 10 July 2007, he became the consensus European nominee to be the head of the IMF, with the personal support of President Nicolas Sarkozy (member of the right UMP party). Former Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka withdrew his candidacy as it was opposed by the majority of European countries. Some critics alleged that Sarkozy proposed Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the IMF to deprive the Socialist Party of one of its more popular figures. Strauss-Kahn became the front runner in the race to become Managing Director of the IMF, with the support of the 27-nation European Union, the United States, China and most of Africa. On 28 September 2007, the International Monetary Fund's 24 executive directors selected him as the new managing director. Strauss-Kahn replaced Spain's Rodrigo Rato. On 30 September 2007, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was formally named as the new head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The only other nominee was the Czech Josef Tošovský, a late candidate proposed by Russia. Strauss-Kahn said: "I am determined to pursue without delay the reforms needed for the IMF to make financial stability serve the international community, while fostering growth and employment". Under Strauss-Kahn the IMF's pursuit of financial stability has included calls for a possible replacement of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. An IMF report from January 2011 called for a stronger role for Special Drawing Rights(SDR) in order to stabilize the global financial system. According to the report, an expanded role for SDRs could help to stabilize the international monetary system. Furthermore, for most countries (except for those using the U.S. dollar as their currency) there would be several advantages in switching the pricing of certain assets, such as oil and gold, from dollars to SDRs. For some commentators that amounts to a call for a "new world currency that would challenge the dominance of the dollar".

Strauss-Kahn made comments that could be perceived as critical of global financial actors, in an interview for a documentary about the Late-2000s financial crisis, Inside Job (2010). He said he had attended a dinner organised by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in which several CEOs of 'the biggest banks in the U.S' had admitted they (or perhaps bankers in general) were 'too greedy' and bore part of the responsibility for the crisis. They said the government " 'should regulate more, because we are too greedy, we can't avoid it.' " Strauss-Kahn said he warned the officials of a number of departments of the U.S. government of an impending crisis. He also said: "At the end of the day, the poorest – as always – pay the most." Referring to his diplomatic efforts to secure IMF aid for Europe following the 2010 sovereign debt crisis, economist Simon Johnson described Strauss-Kahn as "Metternich with a blackberry". In May 2011, referring to the IMF's change of heart in favour of progressive rather than neoliberal values, Joseph Stiglitz wrote that Strauss-Kahn had proved himself to be a "sagacious leader" of the institution.Following Strauss-Kahn's arrest for sexual assault in New York, economist Eswar Prasad said that should he be forced to step down, the IMF "will find it hard to find as effective and skilful an advocate for keeping the institution central to the global monetary system". 

On 15 May 2011, John Lipsky, the IMF’s second-in-command, was named acting Managing Director.

Allegations of Sexual Misconduct

n 2007, Tristane Banon, a French journalist and writer, accused Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her in 2002, but she did not press charges. As of 17 May 2011, mainstream media were reporting that Banon was preparing to file a legal complaint relating to the alleged attack. 

In 2008, the IMF Board appointed an independent investigator following allegations that Strauss-Kahn had had an affair with a subordinate, Piroska Nagy, who was married at the time to economist Mario Blejer. Nagy alleged that Strauss-Kahn had used his position to coerce her into the affair. She was later made redundant and Strauss-Kahn assisted her in getting a new job. The IMF board issued the findings of the investigation; while noting that the affair was "regrettable and reflected a serious error of judgment on the part of the managing director", the board cleared Strauss-Kahn of harassment, favoritism or abuse of power, and indicated that he would remain in his post. Strauss-Kahn issued a public apology for the affair. Le Journal du Dimanche dubbed him "le grand séducteur" (the Great Seducer).

^{2011 Arrest and Charges -} Incident and arrest

At 1 PM on 14 May 2011, at the Sofitel New York Hotel, a 32-year-old hotel maid entered Strauss-Kahn's suite to clean it. She alleged that Strauss-Kahn came out of his bathroom naked, ran after her, attempted to forcibly have sex with her, and forced her to perform oral sex on him. According to a law enforcement source, Strauss-Kahn left the hotel in a hotel limo, and later called the hotel to say that he had left behind his cell phone and to ask if it could be brought to him at the airport.^{[citation needed]} At 4:40 that afternoon, police officers removed Strauss-Kahn from Air France Flight 23 at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport, moments before takeoff for Paris. They arrested him for allegedly sexually assaulting the maid. He was held at a police precinct prior to his initial court appearance.

Proceedings

On 16 May Strauss-Kahn appeared in New York City Criminal Court before Judge Melissa Carow Jackson. A prosecutor said that the alleged victim had provided a detailed account of the alleged assault that the alleged victim picked Strauss-Kahn out of a lineup, and that DNA evidence recovered at the site was being tested. Strauss-Kahn, who had earlier agreed to a forensic examination, did not enter a plea, but his lawyer said he denied all charges. A defense request for $1 million bail was rejected by the judge, due to concerns of his being a flight risk. Strauss-Kahn was remanded to jail until his next court appearance on 20 May 2011. According to a law enforcement official, on May 17, he was placed on suicide watch. He is currently being held at Rikers Island jail, in protective custody in a one-person cell, and will be escorted by a security guard when outside his cell for his safety. Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, an Old Dominion University associate professor, wrote that the IMF's limited form of diplomatic immunity, known as "acts immunity", probably doesn't apply inasmuch as it "only covers actions taken in the course of his duties". The U.S. federal International Organizations Immunities Act has an exemption that is similar to the IMF's rules, limiting immunity to official activities.According to The Washington Post, an IMF spokesman said Strauss-Kahn does not have diplomatic immunity, and his attorney, in an interview, said Strauss-Kahn would not claim any diplomatic protection.

Conspiracy theories of a 'set-up'

In the first days after the arrest there was media speculation, particularly in France, that Strauss-Kahn might be the victim of a setup. The Telegraph reported that the first person to break news of the story was an activist for the French right-wing UMP party, and that the first website to break the news was a French right wing news blog. However, the activist denied being part of a setup, saying he merely happened to know people who worked at the hotel. In another report, a correspondent for NBC television stated that Strauss-Kahn had earlier been "worried his political opponent, current French President Nicolas Sarkozy, would try to frame him with a fake rape... Commentators who expressed doubts over the allegations included some of Strauss-Kahn's rivals, such as UMP member Dominique Paillé and French Minister for Overseas Cooperation Henri de Raincourt. Other commentators suggested the alleged assault may be in keeping with Strauss-Kahn's past behavior as a womanizer and that a setup seems even more implausible than the alleged events. Radio Monte Carlo (RMC) reported on 16 May 2011 that Strauss-Kahn's lawyers claim to have proof that he was at a restaurant lunching with his younger daughter Camille at the time of the alleged assault. According to RMC, Strauss-Kahn paid his bill at mid-day, handed in his key, left the hotel, ate lunch with his daughter, and then took a taxi to the airport, implying that he had already left the hotel at the time of the alleged assault. RMC did not cite its sources. This claim was later shown to be incorrect, as Strauss-Kahn's lawyers indicate his defence will centre around the sexual contact being consensual. At Strauss-Kahn's court appearance, prosecutors said they had seen a video showing Strauss-Kahn leave the hotel in a hurry after the alleged assault.

Personal Life

Strauss-Kahn has four daughters and has been married to his third wife, the American-born French journalist Anne Sinclair, since 1991. The couple have a house in Washington, D.C., an apartment inParis, France, and a holiday home in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Political Career Timeline

Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, since 2007.

Governmental functions

• Minister of Industry and Foreign trade, 1991–1993.
• Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry, 1997–1999 (resignation).

Electoral mandates

• Member of the National Assembly of France for Val d'Oise, 1986–1991 (becoming minister in 1991). Reelected in 1997, was minister 2001–2007 (resigned on becoming Managing Director of the IMF in 2007). Elected in 1986, reelected in 1988, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2007.

Regional Council

• Regional councillor of Ile-de-France, 1998–2001 (resignation).

Municipal Council

• Mayor of Sarcelles, 1995–1997 (resignation).
• Deputy-mayor of Sarcelles, 1997–2007 (resigned on becoming Managing Director of the IMF in 2007). Reelected in 2001.
• Municipal councillor of Sarcelles, 1989–2007 (resigned on becoming Managing Director of the IMF in 2007). Reelected in 1995, 2001.

Agglomeration community Council

• President of the Agglomeration community of Val de France, 2002–2007 (resigned on becoming Managing Director of the IMF in 2007).
• Member of the Agglomeration community of Val de France, 2002–2007 (resigned on becoming Managing Director of the IMF in 2007).

Works

• La Flamme et la Cendre, Grasset, 2002 (ISBN 2-01-279122-0)
• Lettre ouverte aux enfants d’Europe, Grasset, 2004 (ISBN 2-246-68251-7)
• Inflation et partage des surplus; le cas des ménages. Cujas, 1975. (with André Babeau and André Masson).
• Économie de la famille et accumulation patrimoniale. Cujas. 1977.
• La Richesse des Français- Epargne, Plus-value/Héritage. (with André Babeau). Paris: PUF, 1977. Collection « L'économiste » ed. Pierre Tabatoni. Enquête sur la fortune des Français.
• Pierre Bérégovoy: une volonté de réforme au service de l'économie 1984–1993. Cheff, 2000. (with Christian Sautter)
• Pour l'égalité réelle: Eléments pour un réformisme radical, Note de la Fondation Jean Jaurès 2004
• DVD pour le Oui à la constitution, 2005
• 365 jours, journal contre le renoncement, Grasset 2006

Source: wikipedia