During the Bastille Day celebrations this month, French President François Hollande declared - to the incredulity of pretty much everyone in France - that "the recovery is here". There are no particular economic indicators that would suggest this.

Consumer spending and manufacturing remain at historic lows; growth in the third quarter is expected to be zero; the OECD has predicted that unemployment will actually be worse next year; and only this week a senior member of the FPD, Germany's junior coalition partner, pronounced that he was "very worried" about France, arguing that Hollande's decision to raise taxes was "fundamentally wrong."

As an Austrian-American born and raised in Paris, and still living there, I have always been intrigued by the French faith in the French way. No other country - save for the United States - is as persuaded that it embodies a universal model for human societies.

But a system whose economic performance is mediocre in times of prosperity and plain lousy in times of crisis can hardly purport to be a "model." And sadly, the same advantages that make the French believe in their system are also what make the country so unprepared for reform.

The French, in short, are living in la-la land and their current system is doomed.

Whoa... what a firestorm.  At the insistence of many TTPers, last week's How the Clintons Will Destroy John McCain was made a free access article and promptly went viral over the Internet, becoming explosively controversial.

As you can see from the comments on the Member User Forum (201, a TTP record), the response from TTPers was overwhelmingly positive.  I also received a number of responses from personal friends.  Most were very supportive, a few were vehemently upset, with most of the latter assuring me that I remained their friend nonetheless.  I cannot adequately express how much this meant to me.

Then there were those among the latter whose friendship I have lost.  I am most regretful of losing that of Jim Warner's.  Jim had been a dear friend of many years.  I know of no finer man than Jim Warner, a man of unquestionable character and integrity.

As a captured POW held by the Communist Vietnamese for over five years, and a cell mate in the Hanoi Hilton of John McCain's for over a year, Jim felt it necessary to write a rebuttal to my article - without mentioning either my name or the article - in FrontPage Magazine.com.

It is easy to understand Jim's desire to defend his cellmate with whom he suffered indescribable horrors at the hand of the communists.  Thus the excruciating irony of Jim's article - for John McCain possesses a fraction of the integrity and decency of character of Jim Warner.  I would trust my life to Jim Warner without a moment's hesitation.  I would not trust my life to John McCain for a moment.   

Babies got cheaper this month. Twice.

First, Belgian scientists announced that their new method has the potential to cut the costs of some in-vitro fertilization treatments from $7,500 to below $300. Their cut-price recipe requires little more than baking soda and lemon juice in place of purified carbon dioxide gas to maintain acidity when growing an embryo in a lab before implanting it.

Second, a baby called Connor was born after 13 of his parents' embryos had their genomes analyzed using next-generation DNA-sequencing techniques in an Oxford laboratory.

Only three of the embryos were found to have the right chromosome number, and one of these "normal" embryos was then implanted in his mother. This new approach, made possible by the rapidly falling cost of DNA sequencing, promises to cut the number of failures during IVF, reducing both cost and heartache.

The two announcements are a reminder that cost reduction and productivity boosts are the purpose of most innovation. Medicine is no exception. Innovation is driving down the costs of medical interventions all the time, and the falls may be about to accelerate, thanks to biotechnology and information technology.

Whence, then, the relentless rise in the costs of healthcare? Part of the answer is known as the Jevons paradox after the Victorian economist Stanley Jevons.