Dominique Strauss-Kahn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
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| Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund |
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| In office 1 November 2007 – 18 May 2011 |
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| Deputy | John Lipsky | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Rodrigo Rato | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Christine Lagarde | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn
25 April 1949 Neuilly-sur-Seine, Seine, France |
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| Political party | Socialist Party | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouses |
Hélène Dumas
(m. 1967; div. 1984)Brigitte Guillemette
(m. 1984; div. 1989)Anne Sinclair
(m. 1991; div. 2013)Myriam L'Aouffir
(m. 2017) |
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| Children | 5 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Education | HEC Paris Sciences Po Paris Institute of Statistics Paris Nanterre University |
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Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn (French: [dɔminik stʁos kan]; born 25 April 1949), also known as DSK, is a French economist and politician who served as the tenth managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and was a member of the French Socialist Party.
He was a professor of economics at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense and Sciences Po, and was Minister of Economy and Finance from 1997 to 1999, as part of Lionel Jospin's Plural Left government. He sought the nomination in the Socialist Party presidential primary of 2006, but was defeated by Ségolène Royal.
Strauss-Kahn was appointed managing director of the IMF on 28 September 2007, with the backing of then–President of France Nicolas Sarkozy. He served in that capacity until his resignation on 18 May 2011. He then resumed his activities in the private sector, mainly advising governments on their sovereign debts.
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Early life
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was born on 25 April 1949 in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine. He is the son of lawyer Gilbert Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn's father was born to an Alsatian Jewish father and a Catholic mother from Lorraine; Strauss-Kahn's mother is from a Sephardic Jewish family in Tunisia.
He and his parents settled in Agadir, Morocco, in 1951, but after the 1960 earthquake moved to Monaco, where his father practised law. While the family was living in Monaco, Strauss-Kahn went to school at the Lycée Albert Premier. The family later returned to Paris, where he attended classes préparatoires at the Lycée Carnot. He graduated from HEC Paris in 1971 and from Sciences Po and the Paris Institute of Statistics in 1972. He failed the entrance examination for École nationale d'administration, but obtained a bachelor degree in public law, as well as a PhD and an agrégation (1977) in economics at the Université Paris X (Nanterre).
Marriage and children
Strauss-Kahn has been married four times and has five children. His first wife was Hélène Dumas, whom he married in 1967 when he was 18 and she was 20. The marriage lasted sixteen years and produced three children — Vanessa (1973), Marine (1976), and Laurin (1981) — but ended in divorce. Strauss-Kahn married his second wife, Brigitte Guillemette, a public relations executive, in 1986. Their daughter, Camille, was born in 1985. His third wife (married 1991) was Anne Sinclair, a popular French journalist and heiress, the granddaughter of art dealer Paul Rosenberg. In 2012, the press announced Sinclair and Strauss-Kahn's separation. Their divorce was finalized in 2013.
In 2017, Strauss-Kahn married Myriam L'Aouffir, a digital communications expert. Strauss-Kahn also has an American son, Darius, born in 2010, as a result of an affair while he was serving as Director General of the IMF in Washington DC.
Career outside politics
From 1977 to 1981, Strauss-Kahn lectured at the University of Nancy-II, first as an assistant, and later as assistant professor, before taking a position at the University of Nanterre. In 1982, he was appointed to the Plan Commission as head of the finance department, and later as Deputy Commissioner, a position he held until his election to the National Assembly in 1986. After his ousting in the 1993 parliamentary elections, Strauss-Kahn founded DSK Consultants, a corporate law consulting firm. Upon resigning from Lionel Jospin's government he resumed his academic duties, teaching economics at Sciences Po from 2000 until his appointment to the IMF in 2007.
Political career
Strauss-Kahn was first an activist member of the Union of Communist Students, before joining in the 1970s the Centre d'études, de recherches et d'éducation socialiste (Center on Socialist Education Studies and Research, CERES) led by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, future presidential candidate at the 2002 election. There, he befriended the future Prime Minister of France Lionel Jospin (PS).
After the election of President François Mitterrand (PS) in 1981, he decided to stay out of government. He got involved in the Socialist Party (PS), which was led by Lionel Jospin, and founded Socialisme et judaïsme ("Socialism and Judaism"). The next year, he was appointed to the Commissariat au plan (Planning Commission) as commissaire-adjoint.
In 1986, he was elected Member of Parliament for the first time in the Haute-Savoie department, and in 1988 in the Val-d'Oise department. He became chairman of the National Assembly Committee on Finances, famously exchanging heated words with the Finance Minister Pierre Bérégovoy (PS).
Minister for Industry (1991–93)
In 1991, he was nominated by Mitterrand to be Junior Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade in Édith Cresson's social-democratic government. He kept his position in Pierre Bérégovoy's government until the 1993 general elections.
After the electoral defeat of 1993, Strauss-Kahn was appointed by former Prime Minister Michel Rocard chairman of the groupe des experts du PS ("Group of Experts of the Socialist Party"), created by Claude Allègre. The same year, he founded the law firm DSK Consultants, and worked as a business lawyer.
In 1994, Raymond Lévy, who was director of Renault, invited him to join the Cercle de l'Industrie, a French industry lobby in Brussels, where he met the billionaire businessman Vincent Bolloré and top manager Louis Schweitzer; Strauss-Kahn served as secretary-general and later as vice-president. This lobbyist activity earned him criticism from the alter-globalization left.
In June 1995, he was elected mayor of Sarcelles and married Anne Sinclair, a famous television journalist working for the private channel TF1 and in charge of a political show, Sept sur Sept. She ceased presenting this show after Strauss-Kahn's nomination as Minister of Economics and Finance in 1997, in order to avoid conflict of interest, while Strauss-Kahn himself ceded his place as mayor to François Pupponi in order to avoid double responsibilities.
Minister for Economics, Finances and Industry (1997–99)
In 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (PS) appointed Strauss-Kahn as Minister for Economics, Finance and Industry, making him one of the most influential ministers in his Plural Left government.
Although it was in theory contrary to the Socialist Party's electoral program, he implemented a wide privatization program, which included among others the IPO of France Télécom; he also implemented some deregulation policies in the research and development sector. The French economy achieved an excellent performance during his term of office: GDP increased, whereas unemployment and public debt decreased (creation of 300,000 jobs in 1998, a level not seen since 1969). This helped to strengthen his popularity and managed to win the support of former supporters of Jospin and Michel Rocard, making him the leader of the reform-oriented group Socialisme et démocratie. Strauss-Kahn was an early proponent of reducing the working week to 35 hours, a measure implemented by Martine Aubry, Minister for Social Policies.
In 1998 he became one of the leaders of the Socialist Party for the regional elections in the Ile-de-France region (Paris and suburbs), which were won by the PS. But as Strauss-Kahn refused to swap his ministry for the executive leadership of the Ile-de-France, Jean-Paul Huchon became the president of the regional council.
In 1999, he was accused of corruption in two financial scandals related to Elf Aquitaine and the MNEF Affair, a student mutual health insurance, and decided to resign from his ministerial office to fight these charges, in agreement with the "Balladur jurisprudence". He was replaced by Christian Sautter. He was acquitted in November 2001, and was reelected in a by-election in the Val-d'Oise.
As Minister of Economics and Finance, Strauss-Kahn succeeded in decreasing VAT to 5.5% for renovation works in construction, thus supporting this activity. At the same time, he decreased the budget deficit, which was more than 3% of GDP under Alain Juppé's center-right government (1995–97). He thus prepared France's entrance into the eurozone. Strauss-Kahn also repealed the Thomas Act on hedge funds, and launched the Conseil d'orientation des retraites (Orientation Council on Pensions).
Strauss-Kahn succeeded in combining followers of Jospin and Rocard in the same political movement, Socialisme et démocratie, but failed to make it more than an informal network.
In opposition
After Jacques Chirac's success in the 2002 presidential election and the following Union for a Popular Movement (UMP)'s majority in Parliament, Strauss-Kahn was re-elected Member of Parliament on 16 June 2002, in the 8th circonscription of the Val-d'Oise. He first declined in taking part in the new leadership of the PS, then in the opposition, in the 2003 congress of the party. But he joined the party's leadership again at the end of 2004, and was given overall responsibility for drawing up the Socialist programme for the 2007 presidential election, along with Martine Aubry and Jack Lang. During the summer meeting of 2005, he announced that he would be a candidate for the primary elections of the Socialist Party for the presidential election.
At the same time, Strauss-Kahn co-founded the think tank À gauche en Europe (To the Left in Europe) along with Michel Rocard. He presided jointly with Jean-Christophe Cambadélis over the Socialisme et démocratie current in the PS.
Strauss-Kahn was one of the first French politicians to enter the blogosphere; his blog became one of the most visited, along with Juppé's, during his stay in Quebec.
Strauss-Kahn then campaigned for a 'Yes' vote in the 2005 French European Constitution referendum. More than 54% of the French citizens refused it, damaging Strauss-Kahn's position inside the PS, while left-wing Laurent Fabius, who had campaigned for a 'No' vote, was reinforced.
Strauss-Kahn sought the nomination for the Socialist candidacy in the 2007 presidential election. His challengers were former prime minister Laurent Fabius and Ségolène Royal, the president of the Poitou-Charentes region. Strauss-Kahn finished second, behind Royal. On 13 April 2007, Strauss-Kahn called for an "anti-Sarkozy front" between the two rounds of the forthcoming presidential election. Following Ségolène Royal's defeat, Strauss-Kahn criticized the PS's strategy and its chairman, François Hollande. Along with Fabius, he then resigned from the party's national directorate in June 2007. Strauss-Kahn had been widely expected to seek the Socialist nomination for President of France in 2012, and was considered an early favorite.
IMF Managing Director (2007–11)
On 10 July 2007, Strauss-Kahn became the consensus European nominee to be the head of the IMF, with the personal support of President Nicolas Sarkozy (member of the right UMP party).
Strauss-Kahn became the front runner in the race to become Managing Director of the IMF, with the support of the 27-nation European Union, the United States, China and most of Africa. On 28 September 2007, the International Monetary Fund's 24 executive directors selected him as the new managing director. Strauss-Kahn replaced Spain's Rodrigo Rato.
Works
- Inflation et partage des surplus; le cas des ménages. Cujas, 1975. (with André Babeau and André Masson).
- Économie de la famille et accumulation patrimoniale. Cujas. 1977.
- La Richesse des Français- Epargne, Plus-value/Héritage. (with André Babeau). Paris: PUF, 1977. Collection « L'économiste » ed. Pierre Tabatoni. Enquête sur la fortune des Français.
- Pierre Bérégovoy: une volonté de réforme au service de l'économie 1984–1993. Cheff, 2000. (with Christian Sautter)
- La Flamme et la Cendre, Grasset, 2002, (ISBN: 2-01-279122-0)
- Lettre ouverte aux enfants d'Europe, Grasset, 2004, (ISBN: 2-246-68251-7)
- Pour l'égalité réelle: Eléments pour un réformisme radical, Note de la Fondation Jean Jaurès, 2004
- DVD pour le Oui à la constitution, 2005
- 365 jours, journal contre le renoncement, Grasset, 2006
