Skip to content

France Shows Signs of Weakness…

Written by

MikeMcD82

France is no European angel in terms of its fundamental, yet like Germany the credit has received  ‘safe-haven’ status from investors; that is until recently.  French 10Y government bonds have traded mostly lockstep with equivalent German debt since the onset of the European debt crisis, but since the beginning of June the spread between the two have begun to widen.  Historically, France and Germany have had easy access to global financial markets, allowing them to readily issue large sums of Euro denominated bonds, separating the pair from smaller Eurozone peripheries including Greece.  However, investors are growing increasingly concerned over France’ ability to to rein in spending and control a surging deficit.

One of the best quotes I have seen on the topic comes from Nicolas Lenoir, chief market strategist at ICAP Futures LLC, who says, “Being French I can promise you first hand that if there is any form of austerity required as part of the $1 trillion package it will not fly one bit,” Lenoir said in a recent correspondence “We had riots with a daily car-burn rate above 1,200 for over a week because a teenager electrocuted himself trying to escape from the cops, so just try and imagine if railway workers can no longer retire at 50 or 55 after being driven to exhaustion watching a computer do their job 35 hours a week.”  In short, investors’ recent concerns–demonstrated by rising spreads to Germany–are likely not unfounded given France’s past on implementing such measures.  Looking ahead, France will likely continue to come under the microscope of investors, and without clear continued indications the country is headed in the right direction what historically has been easy access to foreign money may feel a bit more painful.

Source: Bloomberg

Previous article

Chinese Government Officials May Have Leaked Key Economic Data

Next article

Building Material Sales Add Volatility to Retail Sales

Join the discussion

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *