French twist: GDP Won't Be As Weak As Expected--Lagarde

Gang,

Today was 'International Day' on FBN. Alexis Glick started the party with a First on Fox Business interview with the Finance Minister of Sweden, along with the Prime Minister of Canada... two very important interviews in the grand scheme of the global financial crisis.

Then at 3pm ET, we landed France's Finance Minister exclusively. Christine Lagarde is one of Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women and has been working tirelessly to keep France at the helm of Euroland's efforts to pull the region out of the global recession. To be sure, there's a lot of work still to be done.  Believe it or not, with Unemployment in France at 7.3%, they've still got lower jobless numbers than here in the U.S.  Their economy was expected to contract in the current quarter by 1.8% but Lagarde told our viewers she'll be out with a revised forecast that is actually slightly better than expected. That's the kind of thing the U.S. would *love* to report.  The rest of her interview is below. I encourage you to listen to a very smart woman who has interesting thoughts on the U.S. banking system which we ALL know is suffering right now.

--Liz

 http://www.foxbusiness.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3717944&referralPlaylistId=c1d39a6a8d1cc33066a5ec0e8969120c5d06e14a