France Protests Spiral Out of Control as EURO Crisis Looms

All right, Alexandre, let's talk about the protests in France. What is happening in France? Student protests, or at least that's how they started out. But obviously, this has become something much, much bigger, much, much more dangerous, much more violent. And the situation in France does appear to be spiraling out of control. The French economy is not doing well. They are racking up a lot of debt. And on top of all of this, you have elections coming up next year, and you have a President Macron who doesn't seem to give an F about anything that is happening in France. He is running around the world trying to get money for Ukraine, hanging out with mercs and whoever else in Europe. And he really just seems completely disengaged by everything that's happening in France. I think you're absolutely correct. And may I just say, I think that you put your finger on the proximate cause of the crisis. There are many underlying reasons to this crisis. My own personal view, and it's a fairly straightforward one, is that the ultimate cause of France's problems is the euro. France joined the euro. France largely created the euro, by the way, because they thought that that would reign in the Germans. What that has done is that it's tied France into a currency which is not its own. So France can't maintain competitiveness through devaluations as it once could have done. The result is that this has gradually crushed competitiveness out of the French economy. Whilst simultaneously making it possible for French governments to borrow and go on borrowing in order to fund an increasingly expensive and distorted welfare state that ultimately is lopsided in its benefits towards the older part of the French population. This is my own take on France's long-term problems. Macron was elected to solve those long-term problems. Of course, he rejected any suggestion that membership of the euro or anything to do with the euro was part of it. His solution to all the problems was, as he always said, more Europe, in other words, deeper European integration, plus all kinds of changes, which basically meant taking away welfare and social supports and economic supports within France, which were deeply unpopular with the French people. But ultimately, the fundamental problem with Macron is that he has never been especially interested in France itself as a nation and as a country. He's always been much more interested first in Europe and his role within the European system and the globalist system of which he is absolutely a part and ultimately also this great crusade against Russia on behalf of Ukraine, which he has embraced and taken to extreme limits. And if you listen to debates that take place in France and listen to people connected to him, you understand that this isn't just a problem of Macron. It extends to what I would call his entire entourage. All of the people around him have been obviously chosen on the basis of those views. And the result is that France's problems have been steadily deteriorating. We've been making program after program about this, basically since soon after Macron became president. We've been making many programs about this. France's situation has been steadily deteriorating. Even as France's president, Macron, like France's previous president, François Hollande, were thinking and concerning themselves with entirely different things. And we now have a situation where, as you said, bond yields are now rising, where the debt situation is out of control, because of this very lopsided way in which the social system works in France. The young people feeling increasingly angry. They feel that the education system is being strangled. It's not getting the funding it needs. They're worrying that their own funding, their own education, as a result, is suffering. They're worrying also about their own prospects, their own future prospects in a country that is visibly going down. Because they're young, and one has to say this also, they are easily manipulated by all sorts of political leaders. There's been much speculation that all the usual regime change operations are taking place as well, and that this is really an attempt to create problems for Marine Le Pen, which is undoubtedly true, by the way. There's also Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's out there trying to use this as well. So, I mean, all of this is going on too. But to repeat again, all of these manipulators could only manipulate the situation if it was already bad, and it is very bad. And so long as this president and people like him remain in power in France, it is going to continue to get worse. And if we have one proximate cause of this, it was that disastrous parliamentary election that Macron called, which is clearly intended to stop the rise of Marine Le Pen's party, the National Rally, in which it succeeded. But it only succeeded through all sorts of electoral manipulations and people standing down so that the National Rally couldn't win a particular seat in one place or another, and all of that kind of thing, which we discussed extensively. Which resulted in a broken parliament where there is no single party and meant that the National Rally, which clearly was moving towards potentially forming France's government, was prevented from doing so. So that the one political force, which might have been able to take responsibility for the situation, was unable to take it. We should revisit those videos. People watching this video should, if you're interested, go back to those videos that we made at the time. We said that this is going to lead to disaster in the future, and that is exactly what has happened. Because it was never about France or Macron. It was about Macron and all his buddies and their position after the elections. When they do hold elections, which we now have coming up in 2027, it was all about their position after everything is said and done and where they're going to go in the globalist hierarchy or structure of things. And that's what he's achieved. You know, if you take a step back and you think about what Macron has done, yeah, he's wrecked the country. Yes, France is going down. But Macron and his buddies, they made it. They made it until 2027. He doesn't have long. He just has a couple of more months. And he's out. And he can move on to his next big position, which undoubtedly he will get. So he accomplished his goal with all those manipulations a couple of years ago. But he's destroyed his country. But he doesn't care. Absolutely. He doesn't care. Exactly. Nor does all his friends care. I mean, they made it. They're out in 2027. They can dump this on Le Pen or whoever it's going to be. Yeah, absolutely. By the way, the word I've heard, and it's in London, there have been some rumors that the position he's angling for is president of the European Central Bank. I mean, Christine Lagarde is going to go eventually. So we want another French person. Wonderful. He has a background in banking. Right. Yes, yes. Of course he does. So, you know, you could say he's a shoo-in. Yes, yes. And then everything's going to go well with him in charge of the ECB, no doubt about it. Exactly. So what happens with France? What happens with these protests? You have the students, huge, huge migration problems, immigration problems in France as well. You have an economy that's completely wrecked. Yes. Debt to GDP ratio. We've seen this play out in Greece, for example, what happens when an economy spirals out of control in this way. But France is too big to bail. It's too big to bail out. Yes. The other thing that's happening to France, and I witnessed it during two visits that I made, a couple of years ago, is that France is being hollowed out from inside. Again, I used to know France very well. I used to stay there, live there. And I remember what a distinctive and rich culture France had. And in France, the kind of European homogenization of culture has been taken further than anywhere else I know in Europe. It is extraordinarily sad to see to anybody who remembers the old France and who loves France in the way that I do. I used to be steeped in French culture. I still am, by the way. For me, this is all very, very difficult and very upsetting. But where does this go? Well, there's two ways forward. Firstly, that this just goes on in the way that it does. We might even get a President Marine Le Pen, but there are increasing doubts about her willingness to take on this problem. And there's a widespread view that she's going to go the way of Maloney. In which case, we might see a temporary abatement of the problems, only for them to get worse later, which is the general trend. And for the hollowing out and decay of France to continue. Or we could see a crisis. A crisis may be in the bond markets, people losing confidence in France's ability to sort out its financial problems. And by the way, any cuts, any attempts at cuts that the French government undertakes, in my opinion, they are not going to solve the underlying problem. Because I don't believe the problem is overspending in France. I'm not saying there hasn't been overspending in France. My view is that the underlying problem is membership of the euro. And the underlying loss of competitiveness in the French economy that that is generating. So if you cut, even if you cut hard and cut taxes hard, the effect will eventually pass whilst the currency remains the same. And what you're going to get in that situation is you're going to get a temporary stabilisation. And then once that stabilisation happens, and the money starts to flow back into France, again, they'll start maxing out on their credit card all over again. And the cycle will repeat itself. And the country will continue its decline. So that's one unfortunate, very sad possibility. The other possibility is that this does escalate into a full blown political and economic crisis. And there are already worries that this could implode, explode the whole euro system, because France is so big. There's suggestions that if that kind of crisis did reach those levels, the European Central Bank would step in to bail out France. The problem with that is talking about the European Central Bank to bail out France. France is huge. I mean, it's not Greece. We're looking at an enormous challenge to do that. And the other problem is that we don't any longer have Angela Merkel in Berlin, there to bring everybody together to do all the various deals, to impose the austerity, and at the same time to get the Finns and the Scandinavians and all of the others, and the Dutch, as well as the German taxpayers to cough up money to give. What we have now is first Mertz, who's going down, and then Alice Weidel, who says she wants to leave the euro altogether. I find it very, very difficult to believe that Germany would support a French bailout by the ECB at this time. So they might refuse. I think we are perhaps closer to the point when they would say no than we have ever been. And by the way, my own view is that that would be the deliverance of France, because France is at the moment in Hotel California in exactly the same way as everyone else in Europe is. Germany too, by the way. If France crashes out, well, of course, the whole thing collapses. But I am not saying that is what's going to happen. They're going to pull every lever to stop it happening. Their ingenuity in this is astonishing. And who knows, they might even succeed. They might even go to war in order to prevent this from happening, or to cover all this up. Absolutely. And no wonder you get Macron in at the ECB after Lagarde, because you put someone in there who will protect the euro above all else. Absolutely. Even sacrificing France. But it's all about protecting the euro, and that's exactly what Lagarde will do, and that's exactly what Macron will do. Absolutely. And of course, you see, protecting the euro means protecting the elite, the group of people that Macron himself belongs to, who basically control Europe through the EU and its institutions and the euro. It's a mess. All right. The most likely scenario, I think, Alexander, is the first one that you outlined. You get a Le Pen who becomes like a Maloney. You get Lagarde and Macron and all these people to shore up the position and the strength of the euro. Everything is short term. Everything is temporary. And you try to ride this out for another couple of years, and who knows, maybe you start some sort of a conflict with Russia. I agree. I mean, straightforwardly, I agree. They'll never rip off the Band-Aid. No, exactly. Yeah. And since we're talking about France, I cannot begin to tell you how sorry that makes me. All right. We'll end it there. We are on Substack. We are on Locals, the Durand.locals.com. Go to the Durand shop, pick up some merch. All those links are in the description box down below. Take care.