Independent thinking for complex markets and current events
by Michael There have been stunning new developments in the Middle East. France and the Palestinian Authority have agreed to establish a joint committee to draft a constitution for a Palestinian state. Needless to say, this will give French President Emmanuel Macron a tremendous amount of power to shape what a future Palestinian government will …
That gap in growth tells a bigger story. Mississippi and West Virginia passing France and Germany in GDP per person shows the old balance is breaking apart. America’s roughest states are still grinding, building, producing, while Europe keeps talking in circles about what used to work. The energy boom and tech push here run on …
In France, pensioners earn more money than people who work. byu/PlastDuck inEconomyCharts While boomers in the U.S. and UK are being forced to go back to work because they can’t afford to retire in the current climate, pensioners in France are not just kicking up their feet—they’re even out-earning those with jobs. French retirees over …
France is facing a full-blown credit crisis. S&P Global Ratings just downgraded the country’s credit rating from AA- to A+, marking the third downgrade in barely a month. The move reflects both political chaos and growing debt problems in Europe’s second-largest economy. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu barely survived two no-confidence votes and was forced to …
via notayesmanseconomics It is a theme of these times that we see Western governments struggling. We started the week with the effective appointment of a new Japanese Prime Minister and we also had the fall of a French Prime Minister accompanied by a desperate attempts by Prime Minister Macron to keep him. The reality according …
It’s begun! pic.twitter.com/VqO2s06qjZ — The Great Martis (@great_martis) October 6, 2025 France will implode first. Croissant? pic.twitter.com/WAAeUN6RXu — The Great Martis (@great_martis) October 6, 2025 BREAKING: The French government just collapsed 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/Ts4yVHGzbN — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 6, 2025 French Prime Minister has resigned again After just two weeks in power, he was unable …
France is staring at a fiscal standoff that feels less like governance and more like extortion. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has been told he cannot pass a budget or even remain in office without Socialist backing. Their price is blunt: a new “Zucman tax,” two percent annually on assets above one hundred million euros Reuters. …
A small plane touched down in Britain this week carrying a family of three. A child and two parents arrived under a visa that gives them almost nothing. No work, no public support, no safety net. And yet this is progress. For the first time in years, policy became real. The system moved. Courts had …
Authored by Mike Shedlock via mishtalk, Economist Gabriel Zucman proposes a 2% tax on French residents with over 100 million euros in assets. Better France Than Here The Wall Street Journal reports Wealth Tax Stages Comeback in France France’s slide into political and fiscal dysfunction is generating a groundswell of support for a sweeping wealth tax …
France is on the edge and everyone is pretending it is not. Debt is rising faster than the government can admit, deficits are stuck above 5 percent of GDP through 2027, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is on track to hit 121 percent by that same year https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-downgrades-france-to-a-outlook-stable-12-09-2025 . That number does not just warn of …
Paris is bracing for a storm that feels less like protest and more like revolt. When teachers walk out, trains stall, pharmacies lock their doors, and teenagers drag desks across the gates of their schools, the government hears sirens. This is the sound of a society rejecting austerity before the first line of the budget …
via notayesmanseconomics This week has opened with some sobering news for La Belle France as late on Friday we were told this. Fitch Ratings – Frankfurt am Main – 12 Sep 2025: FitchRatings has downgraded France’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘A+’ from ‘AA-‘. The Outlook is Stable. This is hardly a surprise …
France is not Greece. Saying it is makes people underestimate the problem. Public debt is €3.35 trillion in 2025. That is 114 percent of GDP and could hit 118.4 percent next year. The government ran a €169.6 billion deficit in 2024. That is 5.8 percent of GDP. Public spending takes up 57.1 percent of the …
France sent 80,000 police into the streets. Not to keep order. They went to confront people who no longer trust the government. The prime minister has been replaced five times in less than two years. Fires burn on the roads. Buses are overturned. Riot squads fire tear gas at crowds that will not move. Macron …
Paris is burning with anger and debt. Macron’s government is collapsing under its own numbers, and the streets are alive with people who have stopped listening to excuses. The country owes €3.3 trillion. Interest alone takes 7 percent of the budget and grows every day. Every attempt to cut €44 billion failed. Lawmakers crushed the …
French Prime Minister François Bayrou has called for a confidence vote in the French parliament today at 3 PM CEST He is not expected to win the vote and will likely resign tonight. This is the first time this has happened in the 5th Republic, which has been in place since 1958, plunging France into …
by Martin Armstrong France’s Ministry of Health has urged all hospitals to prepare for war by March 2026. President Emmanuel Macron repeatedly stated that he is ready to deploy French troops to Ukraine’s front lines, and now, the entire nation must prepare for the inevitable. Hospitals throughout the nation have been urged to prepare for …
France is cracking under its own weight. Debt has surged past €3.35 trillion, more than 114 percent of GDP. The government’s answer is €5 billion in emergency cuts scraped from unspent funds and health insurance. “France faces €5bn in fresh cuts as debt balloons to record high” RFI The cuts are theater. The deficit is …
The firewall didn’t just weaken. It detonated. The center in Europe has lost its grip and the populist right-wing is surging. “For the first time, populist or far-right parties are leading the polls in the U.K., France and Germany.” Political Wire “Surge in immigration and weak economic growth spark voter backlash in France, the U.K. …
France’s government is going to collapse again in a couple weeks. While everyone was distracted by trade wars, the underlying schism in politics remained unresolved. France is between a rock and a hard place, trying to fix its budget. Here’s the thing: both the rock and the hard place are the same thing.
maybe the EU wants them to implode, so they can bail them out and enforce certain conditions? pic.twitter.com/e2gXVWbuuT — myuzumaki (@myuzumaki_com) August 27, 2025
via notayesmanseconomics This morning has revived a topic that had gone quiet for a while and so let me hand you over to Le Monde. François Bayrou has chosen not to endure political instability but to precipitate it in order to better extricate himself from it. On Monday, August 25, the Prime Minister announced that a …
There seems to be a lot of competition for liquidity out there from the purveyors of “risk-free” assets… — Nothing To See Here (@TylerHardt) August 26, 2025 With the BOJ stepping back, foreign capital may repatriate, U.S. and European rates rise, and emerging markets brace for currency and funding turmoil, leaving investors facing unprecedented uncertainty. …
It is a blackout. Thirteen nations have turned off the flow of mail to the United States. Germany. The UK. Australia. India. Sweden. Denmark. Italy. France. Austria. Switzerland. Korea. Japan. Thailand. No press release. No explanation. Just silence and severed logistics. The lifelines of commerce and family vanish overnight, and no one in Washington seems …
In France, hiring is priced like a luxury good. To put €39,000 in a worker’s pocket, an employer may need to spend close to €95,000. That’s not a typo—it’s the weight of payroll charges that double the real cost of a job. iCalculator shows that a gross salary of €95,000 shrinks to about €48,000 net …
Wildfires are ripping through France, Greece, Turkey, Canada, and California with no signs of slowing. Yet the climate change excuse is wearing thin. These fires are not just nature’s fury. They are failures of policy, planning, and prevention. The real disaster is the world’s refusal to face hard truths and act. “Fast-moving flames, fanned by …
The EU just signed off on a $1.35 trillion trade framework that locks in a 15% tariff on most of its exports to the U.S. In return, Brussels pledged to buy $750 billion of American LNG over 3 years and invest another $600 billion into U.S. industries. Von der Leyen called it “predictability.” Markets called …
France’s government is running out of options. On July 15, Prime Minister François Bayrou proposed eliminating two national public holidays to help close a €43.8 billion budget gap in the 2026 fiscal plan. The move is part of a broader austerity package aimed at reducing the deficit from 5.4% of GDP to 4.6% next year. …
Europe’s energy backbone is cracking. The Netherlands has confirmed it will begin electricity rationing this summer to relieve pressure on its overstretched grid. Industrial zones in Rotterdam and Eindhoven will face rolling curtailments during peak hours. Residential areas are being asked to reduce usage voluntarily. The government says it’s a “preventative measure,” but the grid …
Iran warns US, UK, and France of impending 'very large-scale attacks' on Israel — Mehr Threatens that countries aiding Israel will have their bases, ships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea targeted Tehran signals readiness for regional escalation if West intervenes pic.twitter.com/NBIbHX3npD — RT (@RT_com) June 14, 2025 BREAKING: Iran issues a warning to …