ABSTRACT
Pierre Beregovoy, presidential chief of staff during the Pierre Mauroy period, then minister of finance and finally "super-minister" of finance and economy, was the quickest of the Socialist high command to draw "modem" conclusions from this experience. The Socialists in France did not know much about economics, but there was at least one of them who undertook a remarkable learning curve during their years in power. Pierre Beregovoy, who was in charge of economics and finance during most of these years, believed as late as 1983 that France should, for economic and financial purposes, get out of the European Economic Community and go it alone, persevering in its countercyclical Keynesian experiment. His conversion to low deficits and strong currencies was important not only in that it defined the ascendance of the modernizers on the French left over the traditionalists, but in that it made European federation possible.
