Villefranche-sur-mer v. 3

Dear Friends,

Today, it rained almost all day, and we are still suffering jet lag so we slept late.  We finally got going on our walk at about 3:30 pm which is the perfect time since the stores are re-opening after their mid-day closing, usually from noon or 12:30 to 3:30.  We walked along the sea below the giant walls of the old fort with the waves hitting the rocks below us.  When we got up to the Octroi, we could start our shopping for the day.

Before I continue, perhaps the time has come for a little lesson on Villefranche.  The old town of Villefranche along with the fort that protected it and the harbor sit at seal level but the hills drop precipitously into the sea.  As a result in the old town you are often walking up/down very steep hills.  The road that is right by the ocean only goes along the harbor but cannot go to the town on either side.  The first road up the hill that can go to other towns is referred to as the basse corniche.  At the base corniche we can get the bus to Nice or Monaco depending on whether we are heading east (to Nice) or west.  When we reach the basse corniche, we have left the old town.  To walk from sea level just below our apartment to the base corniche is about 500 meters even though as the crow flies it would be about half of that distance.  All of the restaurants and shops that we frequent are at or below the base corniche.  Just to give you an idea of the ratio of hills to distance, my step counter for today shows that I only walked 6,171 steps but I walked up/down 36 stories.

The next level up is the moyenne corniche, roughly halfway between the basse corniche and the grande corniche that runs along the very top of the hill.  The grande corniche is over 200 meters above sea level, but only about 600 meters as the crow flies.  That is probably over a 30% gradient.  The system of basse, moyenne and grande corniche works all along the French coast of the Mediteranean.

I should add just a little history.  The harbor at Villefranche is the only natural, deep water harbor  along the north coast of the Mediterranean.  As a result, since forever it has been conquered and occupied by just about any force you have ever studied in history, starting with the Greeks and Romans, then in more modern times the French retook it in 1793 only to give it up to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.  It was returned to the French in 1860 and has remained French since then.  The Russians used the harbor as an important port in the late 19th century, and Villefranche served as the home port for the American 6th Fleet from 1948 to 1966.  In 1966 Charles DeGaulle took France out of NATO and forced the Americans to leave.  It is now the most visited port of call for cruise ships in France.

So I said that when we reached the Octroi we could start our shopping.  The Octroi is on the basse corniche and gets its name from the place where the tax on goods was collected.  On the basse corniche at the Octroi, you will find a Casino store, Picard Surgelés and Primeurs which we frequent on our shopping trips.  There are also many other shops, etc.  As usual we started our shopping at the Casino, moved on to Picard and then Primeurs before heading back down into the old town where we could stop at the boucher, the patisserie, another Casino (where they have bio milk) and the legume guy.

This trip resulted in a particularly good meal.  We were delighted to find both romanesco broccoli and cauilflower to roast.

In addition, the entrecôte at the boucher looked really good so we got 500 grams.

When we added some baked potatoes and a fresh baguette, we had a great looking meal.

We could never skip the fresh pastries, so we finished with a tarte au poire.

All in all not a bad way to forget that it was a rainy day.  Tomorrow is predicted to be sunny, so we can eat more healthy then.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-mer v.2

Dear Friends,

As New Years' Day comes to a close here in France, I have been thinking about how things are different when we are here.

First, since we grocery shop everyday, we tend to buy only what we need and use everything we buy. For example, today virtually all the stores were closed, but we discovered on our walk that one of the boulangeries was in fact open.  So we had to stop in to buy some dessert for a dinner that would be made from things we had purchased on our first day of provisioning.  Tonight for dinner we used the leftover sauce with leek, onions and potatoes along with some carrots and a frozen chicken breast to make a wonderful one pan meal.

We added a simple lettuce salad with Jane's balsamic vinaigrette dressing and a bottle of wine for a perfect meal.

Of course we had to finish with the wonderful desserts we had purchased at the boulangerie.

Fortunately the stores will be open tomorrow so we can provision again, although we saved the leftover sauce that now has in it potatoes, green beans, carrots, leeks and onions although not much of any one of them.  We will have a great soup for lunch tomorrow.  

Since we walk everywhere to shop and buy primarily local products, our carbon footprint (ignoring the airplane flight to get here) is really quite small and since we throw out very little we can feel very smug about how we are treating the planet.

The other thing that I have been thinking about while we are here is the need to be inclusive of all people.  Even in this small town, there are a wide variety of people with different ethnic backgrounds, but there is a sense of harmony. 

Last night we went to dinner at a restaurant that was organized by our landlady.  In addition to us, there was another American couple from St. Louis who visit Villefranche several times a year, a Canadian couple that also visit several times a year, a couple consisting of a woman born in Amsterdam and her husband who was born in Australia who now live in Turkey but have just bought a place in Villefranche, a French woman who lives in Villefranche, and our landlady and her husband both of whom are American but met in and now live in Villefranche. Amazingly enough all of us shared relatively close political views.  In a way we were all the same - white, financially well off, educated and politically liberal; but our life experiences were very different.  

We all simply accepted each other and had a wonderful evening.  Wouldn't the world be a better place if we always accepted new people and were inclusive.  My New Years' Resolution is to be more inclusive in how I live my life.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Hillary Clinton's Economic Policies

Dear Friends,

I am surprised at how often a President is given credit for good economic times during his presidency or blame for bad economic times during his presidency.  In fact, the President has little impact on the economy during his time in office.  President Obama was certainly not responsible for the large number of job losses during the first part of his first term, nor was he responsible for the increase in employment, as anemic and slow as it was.  The recovery and job growth could have been much faster if we had aggressively increased government spending, but President Obama was still talking about preventing larger deficits and the Republicans would certainly have blocked any more aggressive stimulus measures.

George W. Bush bears much of the blame for Great Recession, but Bill Clinton is certainly responsible as well.  Bill Clinton is given great credit for the economic boom that occurred during his presidency, but in fact it was policies that he supported that led directly to the Great Recession. It was under his presidency that banks were deregulated with the repeal of  Glass-Steagall and that the outsourcing of many manufacturing jobs was encouraged as a result of NAFTA.

Hillary Clinton has suggested that she would use Bill as an advisor particularly on economic issues, pointing to the prosperous economic times during his administration.  She also has chosen Alan Blinder as one of her top economics advisors.  Last October the Daily Kos ran a piece entitled "Meet Alan Blinder, Hillary Clinton's Economic Advisor (and Wall St. One-Percenter)" (here).  After reading the piece, it is easy to understand why Hillary Clinton is against re-instating Glass-Steagall and is against breaking up the biggest banks.

Alan Blinder is described in the first two sentences of the piece as follows:

Hillary Clinton's economic advisor, Alan Blinder, co-founded and is Vice Chair of a super-elite Wall St financial firm, Promontory Interfinancial Network. He is a former Vice Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank and chair of Princeton University economics department. 

The piece goes on to discuss what Promontory Interfinancial Network does.  It quotes Reuters

Promontory is proof positive, then, of just how lucrative the revolving-door business can be. The company is full of lavishly-paid former regulators, hiring themselves out at $1,500 an hour to banks desperate for advice on how to navigate Washington’s regulatory thicket. 'the firm acts as an advocate for banks, helping draft letters that challenge crucial rules and discussing reforms with regulators'. Regulators are more likely to trust their former colleagues than they are the banks they’re trying to regulate, and by hiring Promontory, banks can co-opt those former regulators and use them to to effectively work the refs.

Among other things, Promontory provides a mechanism that permits wealthy individuals to get government insurance on deposits in excess of the FDIC limit.  In October, 2008, some in Congress wanted to insure all deposits without limit which would have destroyed this very lucrative part of Promontory's business.  Insuring all deposits would have helped to stabilize the banking industry by protecting individual deposits.  The article describes Alan Blinder's actions

Can one financial firm affect US macro-economic policy, to our detriment? You betcha, if it includes someone like Alan Blinder. In October 2008, the depths of the financial crisis, some in Congress wanted to insure all deposits (as did Germany and Ireland) to stabilize the system -- which would have undermined Promontory Interfinancial Network's business. Alan Blinder and Glenn Hubbard opined in the WSJ against this -- without mentioning their financial self-interest for opposing it. That's right, in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they co-authored a WSJ op-ed advocating a public policy that would benefit them at the expense of the American (and entire world's) financial system, and they failed to disclose their conflict of interest. You can read their op-ed, on the WSJ website.

The piece continues

It would be hard to find someone more embedded in Wall Street's revolving doors with regulators/government and legalized corruption than Alan Blinder.  ...
How deeply in bed with 1% Wall St can the Clintons be? And how blind, ignorant or uncaring can some 'Democrats' be, to tolerate this?

There will be no real change in our economic system that is rigged in favor of the One-Percenters under a Hillary Clinton administration.  It took a strong challenge from Bernie Sanders to get her to tentatively reject TPP and to support an increase in the minimum wage although not to a livable level.  While she has skillfully adopted the language of fighting against income and wealth inequality, she refuses to endorse any changes that will actually address the problem.  She is an establishment candidate who will do the bidding of the One-Percenters who have funded her campaign as well as the Clinton Foundation and her lifestyle with huge speaking fees.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

P.S.  After I initially published this post, I read Paul Krugman's blog post in The New York Times (here) entitled "Presidents and the Economy".  The blog post started out with this paragraph.

After I put up my post comparing private-sector jobs under Obama and Bush, a number of people asked me whether I believe that presidents have a large effect on economic performance. My answer is no — but conservatives believe that they do, which is why this kind of comparison is useful.

So you see a Nobel Prize winning economist agrees with me.

Villefranche-sur-mer v.1

Chers Amis,

Nous sommes arrivés à Villefranche-sur-mer, et nous allons y rester pour le mois de janvier.

Our flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam was very nice since we were very unexpectedly upgraded to first class, as Delta had oversold the flight.

We were met at the Nice airport by our taxi driver and taken to Villefranche where we were met by Valentina who helped us with our luggage (a real blessing since we overpacked as usual and are getting old) and let us into our apartment. We have the same apartment as last year. It is just as wonderful as we remembered it to be.  You can see multiple pictures of it here.  It is referred to as "Chez Nous".

We were too tired to provision so we went to lunch at Cosmos where we have eaten our first lunch each time we have come here.  After lunch we napped and were still too tired to provision, so we went to Le Serre for a quick pizza for dinner.  With each meal, we were getting more chatty in French.

Today, since we still had not provisioned, we were forced to have breakfast at Les Palmiers, a place we frequently have breakfast when we do not have the right food in our apartment.  We are forced to have pain au chocolat et espresso along with our omelette.

After breakfast we finally did our provisioning.  The first stop is the Casino which is not a casino but a chain of grocery stores.  This store is good for staples like toilet paper, cereal, soap, mayonnaise, etc.  Next stop is Picard Surgelés for some frozen berries, sauces and soup as well as our favorite mustard.  Next Primeur, where we can get the best roquefort in the world as well as fresh vegetables and fruits, but we prefer another location for the vegetables.  Next stop would be the patisserie but the one closest to our apartment is closed on Wednesdays so we skipped the bread.  The next stop was the butcher where we got some fantastic pork chops that are more tender and tastier than any that we have ever had in the United States.  We also got some wine here.  The final stop was the guy who sells fruits and vegetables in a tiny square next to the butcher.  Here we got some potatoes, leeks, onions and green beans, all for 4 euros, and he is the expensive place in town.  He is a wonderful guy who makes sure that we get just what we need when we get it.  His usual question with an avocado is when will eat it, so that he can give us one that will be ready when we want to eat it.

After provisioning we had to make a trip to Nice, since this year our apartment comes with a nespresso machine.  The only place to get real Nespresso pods is at Place Masséna in Nice.  After a bus trip and a walk we decided we needed lunch so we stopped at a place serving Italian food in the old city of Nice.  After lunch we got the Nespresso pods and had to visit the Galeries Lafayette to do some shopping.  Finally we returned to Villefranche and our apartment where I sat on our balcony and read The New York Times and Minneapolis Star Tribune online.  I had a hard time concentrating because of the distracting view.

After a short rest, we made dinner for ourselves.

And for dessert the world's best roquefort.

And so ended our first full day.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal