It’s 2035. France faces bankruptcy. The French president has called a secret emergency meeting of Euro zone presidents. The air is so thick they can swallow it. Standing in the middle of the large room, disheveled, the French president pleads:
🇫🇷: It’s true. We’re broke. So I come to you today to beg for your help. Please, without you, tomorrow we’re either defaulting on our debt or missing our pension and civil servant salaries. All hell will break loose.
🇩🇪 Germany: But why are you about to default?
🇫🇷: It’s the Capitalists! They won’t buy our debt anymore. They’re demanding ridiculous interest payments!
🇮🇪Ireland: Well yeah, they don’t trust you’re going to repay them. They lost confidence in you because your debt keeps growing and they think you’re going to default.
🇧🇬Bulgaria: But why does debt keep climbing?
🇫🇷: It’s because…
🇳🇱 Netherlands: Because you keep overspending!
57.5% of GDP… You’re worse than the USSR! A Communist country!
🇫🇮Finland: Actually, you can spend as much as France, or even more. We do it. That’s not the problem, the problem is that that spending is not covered by income. France has a massive deficit. France has lost money every year for 50 years!
🇨🇾Cyprus: Just raise your taxes
🇫🇷: I wish we could… They’re already the highest in the world.1
🇫🇷: We tried to raise them in the past and it didn’t go well. We had a wealth tax and had to withdraw it in 2018 after rich taxpayers left. We replaced it with a real estate tax only, as land can’t emigrate, but that was much less income.
🇲🇹 Malta: Then cut your spending.
🇫🇷: We’re already cutting to the bone! So much so that people are getting poorer!
🇬🇷Greece: You haven’t cut shit! You’ve only scratched the surface! We really cut to the bone. At one point, our GDP per capita was 25% below the peak. That’s sacrifice! Not your café-croissant austerity!
🇫🇷: But didn’t you see the news? The riots every time we say we will cut spending?
🇧🇪Belgium: That’s bullshit. Your problem is your pensions. Pensioners don’t go to the street. You must cut pension costs.
Yeah? Then they will just vote for the populists, who will run on early retirement, will revert the reforms, and make everything worse.
🇩🇪 Germany: So let me get this straight. You spend 57% of GDP on stuff, and 5.4% of that is deficit. There are 4 ways to reduce a deficit:2
Cut costs
Increase revenue by raising taxes
Sell debt to cover the gap
Print money
On (1), you say you can’t cut costs because people get angry and they will just vote you out.
On (2), you say you can’t raise taxes anymore because they’re already too high.
On (3), debt is what you’ve been doing to close the gap, but the music has stopped, and youn can’t do that anymore.
But of course you can’t (4) print money, because you belong to the Euro zone, so the rest of us have to print that money to bail you out? You want to cause inflation everywhere in Europe so that you can keep spending?
🇫🇷: If you don’t do it, the populists will win! Do you want a French Hitler?
🇦🇹 Austria: What about all the austerity WE had to go through? We all had to increase our retirement ages, we all had to lower our unemployment benefits! Such chutzpah to come to us saying we had to do it, but you can’t, threatening us with another Hitler!
🇮🇹 Italy: Come on guys, let’s not be so aggressive. It can happen to anybody. We’re in this together, right?
🇭🇷 Croatia: Only when we all do our share. France has not, and it’s a massive country, risking everything for everybody!
🇵🇹 Portugal: Guys guys guys, let’s not jump to conclusions. We need to think! If France defaults, the entire Eurozone will be sent into a tailspin. Our banks will default because they’re holding French bonds, the financial system will break, people will lose their savings, there will be runs on the banks, companies won’t be able to finance anything…
🇱🇻 Latvia: Yes, but if it doesn’t default, nothing will change! People will continue dancing in the streets while our citizens have to work! How can I go to my voters and say: “You have to work 40h per week until you’re 70 because the French only want to work 35h until they’re 61?”
🇪🇪 Estonia: And not all buyers are exposed! Only the ones that allowed the party to continue by buying it again and again over the decades, making a quick buck trusting that we would bail them out if push came to shove.3 I think they must learn the lessons. Let France fail!
Suddenly, the voice of the the president of 🇱🇺Luxemburg emerges from the back, in half darkness, reciting in perfect French:
For decades, the French lived like kings,
On borrowed gold and lavish things.
Spending fortunes never earned,
Laughing as their debts returned.
One day, they found themselves in plight
When debt came knocking overnight.
Not a single euro more
Could be borrowed as before.
They went crying in despair,
Seeking neighbors' wealth to spare,
Begging them to lend some gold
Till the crisis lost its hold.
“We shall pay you,” said the French,
“When we're out of this deep trench,
Principal and interest too,
We'll pay both, we swear to you.”
The Europeans would not lend;
Their patience found its end.
“What did you do all those years?”
They asked, unmoved by Frenchmen’s tears.
“We spent decades, night and day,
Working less and raising pay.”
“You worked less? How very nice.
Now it's time to pay the price.”
This is where France is heading—unless AI saves it.
