the unemployment report Friday showed September was the fourth month in a row that the economy lost jobs the US Treasury secretary and finance ministers from around the world met in Washington this weekend to try to find a way to get the global economy moving again the United States is very worried that if Europe Cuts government spending too much it could severely hurt economic growth right here so earlier I spoke with the French Finance Minister Christine lagard a proponent of European austerity about whether growth is at risk Minister Christine lagard thank you so much for joining us there seems to be tension between the United States and Europe over what's the most sensible way to deal with the current lack of growth the US wants Europe to continue pushing money into the system Europe is talking about a lot of austerity in terms of growth versus austerity uh it's a policy that we've adopted in pretty pretty much all European countries that we need to address both issues if we do not reduce the public deficit it's not going to be conducive to growth why is that because people worry about public deficit if they worry about it they begin to save if they save too much they don't consume if they don't consume unemployment goes up and production goes down so we need to attack that Circle from the deficit but you you called it a circle and there is a circular argument about it because in fact many economists particularly American economists are saying that Europe some of them many of the prominent ones are saying that Europe is in fact going around it the wrong way that in fact it needs more stimulus to provide more growth and then to attack deficits from a from a position of strength why won't Europe do that because if I look at my numbers uh which is better than you know theories and and and uh speculations if I look at my numbers we've stimulated the French economy massively in the year 2009 end of 2008 2009 and my numbers are now going up I've got growth up 1. 6% from netive -2. 6 I've got unemployment down from 9.
6 down to 9. 3 and I've got deficit down as well from 8. 2 where we thought it would be down to 7.
