Saturday 6 August 2011

Christine Lagarde beats Baroness Ashton as world´s best paid female politician

Only the second best paid
There seems to be no end to the ever growing crisis within the European Union. Here is the latest proof of the serious state of affairs within the EU:

The British Baroness Catherine Ashton (unelected " EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy"), has lost her position as the world´s most highly paid female politician to former French minister of finance, Christine Lagarde, who now heads the IMF. With her annual salary of $550.000 Madame Lagarde easily beats Lady Catherine´s paltry $538,000 annual pay package.


This serious deterioration has not gone unnoticed by the top eurocrats. The EU Commission is now proposing a new long-term EU budget where the share of administration costs is set to rise from 5.7 to 6.1 percent. Surely a modest pay rise for the Baroness is included in that package.


In case the Commission´s proposals are not accepted by the member countries, there is still this hope that the EU bigwigs can cling to:

A French court has ordered an investigation into whether the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, abused her position when she was finance minister in allowing a huge state settlement to a businessman friend of the President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The best paid

If Mme Lagarde, as a consequence of the investigation, will exit the IMF the same way as her famous also French predecessor DSK, Lady Catherine could still end up retaining her position as the world´s best paid female politician/bureaucrat - even without a pay rise!


Even in a worst case scenario - with no pay rise at all - Baroness Ashton of Upholland can take some comfort in the fact that she still easily beats such ordinary politicians as German chancellor Angela Merkel, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - and even President Barack Obama - in the the pay league.

PS

And we, the European tax payers, are of course extremely grateful for having such illustrious representatives as Lady Catherine and Mme Lagarde as our representatives in places of power, fighting for a bright future
(at least for themselves). We can also take comfort in the fact that there are at least 1000 unelected EU bureaucrats, who earn more than e.g. the U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, all working hard in order to spend our money on projects like this one.

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