DVD Software

Buried at the end of an IHT article on French president Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to tax the Internet and raise levies on blank media is this doozy: abolishing gross domestic product in favor of a better metric of happiness, and defending the economy "sovereign wealth funds and other financial predators."

In the 45-minute speech, Sarkozy declared the death of the 35-hour week, suggested that large companies may have to double or triple the part of their profit they are obliged to share with employees and vowed to replace gross domestic product with a more holistic indicator of economic welfare that he has commissioned from two Nobel laureates in economics, Amarthya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz. He also said that he would put a state bank in charge of defending French industry against sovereign wealth funds and other financial predators.