(Zero Hedge)—French government bonds sold off, and the CAC 40 fell Monday after a weekend of nationwide riots and chaos intensified concerns over political instability as the Macron government failed to restore order.
President Emmanuel Macron conveniently blamed high gas prices, while lefty corporate media ran cover and really tried to reinforce the narrative (again) that these rioters were merely youth-led protesters. CBS News got caught calling riots “scuffles” and subsequently deleted the X post.
And this.
In reality, France and much of Europe are being attacked from within by far-left groups, and this is really embarrassing, as globalist leaders in the failing bloc have allowed left-wing extremism to fester for years.
On top of the riots spurred by the far-left activist networks, a decade or more of unfettered mass migration brought in millions of migrants (watch how). Given this nation-killing cocktail, it comes as no surprise that corporate media would run an information campaign to cover up the parties responsible for the chaos because, quite frankly, these riots are downright embarrassing for globalists.
Let’s start with markets.
The premium investors demand to hold French 10-year debt over German bonds widened to 146 basis points, the highest in two weeks. The yield gap with Italy also reached a record, while the main equity index, the CAC 40, fell 1.3%, and the euro fell .5% to $1.1183 amid unrest spreading across the bloc.
Louis-Vincent Gave of Gavekal Research warned that France faces overlapping social, mass migration, energy, economic, and fiscal crises, all hitting at once like a massive freight train. He warned that the weekend’s developments offered little support for either a stronger euro or lower French borrowing costs.
“All this at a time when the French president is in office, but not in power. Nothing that occurred this weekend seems to point the way toward a higher euro, or lower French bond yields,” Gave said.
Macron is ending his term amid embarrassing social and economic crises, all colliding at once.
The president’s advisers likely gave him the script to go on national television late Sunday and blame the crisis on “fuel” prices, but this is far from the truth, as the rioters are far-left radicals mixed in with what appear to be migrants.
Corporate media first ran cover for an imploding France by blaming “students” angered by oversized classrooms and a lack of education funding for burning buses, buildings, and schools and looting high-end luxury stores. But that narrative has failed to stick as corporate media is no longer the gatekeepers of “truth.”
The unrest likely stems from ongoing discussions among French politicians over the proposed 2027 budget. The government’s proposed budget includes €43 billion ($48.2 billion) in measures to cut the deficit and keep the country from descending into a sovereign debt crisis. In other words, less funding for the welfare state.
“France’s credit-default swap curve is likely to flatten in the coming months as traders demand a bigger premium to underwrite idiosyncratic political risk ahead of the April presidential elections. …the French National Assembly began discussing next year’s budget last week without passing it yet. That adds one more layer of uncertainty for the country’s risk assets,” Bloomberg Strategists wrote in a note earlier today.
The problem is that spending cuts jeopardize the welfare state, as services are already deteriorating. The left and migrants who rely on handsome government handouts are likely furious that their easy way of life, leeching off taxpayers, could come to an end with a presidential election six months away and right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen rising in the polls and Polymarket odds. She is calling for austerity to fix the fiscal mess spurred by Macron’s globalist government.
“While the violent protests are not representative of the vast majority of the people, the developments over the weekend nevertheless underscore the delicate balancing act the government is facing between appeasing the people and the markets,” said Commerzbank AG strategist Erik Liem.
To sum up: Europe faces a combustible mix of far-left extremism, mounting pressures from more than a decade of mass migration, and welfare states buckling under higher borrowing costs. In France, those pressures are converging into a crisis of social unrest, fiscal crisis, and Macron ending his term in crisis.
As we warned on Sunday: France Enters “Point of No Return.” The question is whether Marine Le Pen can reverse that trajectory, or whether the forces driving France’s rapid demise are becoming too entrenched for any government to contain.
