The @ecb still holds lots of govt debt. Unlike the Fed, BoE or Riksbank, it hasn't been selling any, just stopped reinvesting maturing principal. Eg., publicly traded French debt (excl. ECB holdings) is only 90% of GDP versus headline of 116%. For the Eurozone it's 67% vs 88%.

@EuroBriefing France leaving the Euro (a French idea which was foisted upon Germany in 1989/90) may not be inconceivable, at some point. The French seem to have a more abstract relationship with money and during hard and possibly revolutionary times, the monetary system may be simply changed.

What was going on here?

@EuroBriefing What he says « I will ask the ECB to buy 🇫🇷 debt ». But the ECB will have all liberty to say no. And that’s all. Note that he knows nothing about all that.

The future of the euro has not been much of a discussion point since the Euro sovereign debt crisis. But that might change rather quickly. Jordan Bardella just said he would put pressure on the ECB to buy French bonds. Why would other euro members accept a bail-out of a country

In the second episode of the Econoclast podcast, Yanis and I are debunking more orthodoxies: that China tries to displace the dollar as the world's leading currency, and that centrist parties in Europe need to protect themselves against the far-right through firewalls.

"Deeply he brooded, as if lowering himself through deep water even to the bottom of this perception, even to that places where causes, for it seemed to him that this is precisely what thought is about—apprehension of causes, through this alone do perceptions become insights, they

after yesterday’s hearing it appears more probable now that the US Supreme Court will strike down Donald Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. While Trump’s opponents, especially in the European media, will prematurely declare the unrecoverable failure of his presidency, the perverse effect

In our latest Eurointelligence podcast, our team discusses the parallels and difference of the fiscal situation in the UK and France. The politics is different. But the underlying causes are surprisingly similar. https://t.co/Mb711WxrHH

When the tech luddites in the European Commission and national governments think about AI, they think about data centres. Five years ago, they thought about chip factories, with their silly Chips Act. The EU just does not get high tech. This is what happens when you stop

The big idea in Berlin is to levy a tariff on Chinese steel imports to protect Germany’s faltering steel industry. Good luck with this. Contrary to rumours, China’s existing export controls on rare earths and other critical raw materials remain in place. The EU is far more

Here is my latest column for UnHerd on why the work of Joel Mokyr, one of this year's Nobel Prize winners for economics, goes a long way to explaining Europe's dismal economic performance. They stopped innovating decades ago. https://t.co/QwuiBU5xob

We know the psychology of welfare dependency. Geopolitical dependency and dependency on critical supplies works in exactly the same way. Europeans saw what happened in Japan in 2010. They saw what happened to their own supply chains during the pandemic. Yet, the EU car industry

After our civil court marriage, we embarked with a team of volunteers and 54,000 spiritual books to the Emerald Isle, distributing them like autumn leaves. This fulfilled my dream of becoming a missionary. Soon after, we planned a religious church wedding and set the date. A

@EuroBriefing Germany stopped investing at the beginning of 2010 to deflate the internal demand and protect trade surpluses. The accumulated savings were not reinvested in the country. This is THE huge Sin (Schuld) shared by all German mercantilists from Merkel to Merz through SPD.

France’s strong economic performance – and the growing gap with Germany - is quite remarkable, especially in view of the never-ending French political crisis. France has a smaller, but more diversified and resilient manufacturing sector. And unlike Germany, France under Macron

here is our latest Eurointelligence podcast, in which our team discusses the Russian seizure of Pokrovsk, a militarily important town in Donetsk, and the scenarios going forward. https://t.co/Mb711WwTS9

Germany’s culture state secretary, Wolfram Weimer, wants to raise a digital tax so he can subsidise the dying legacy media. There are obvious parallels to Germany’s industrial policies to support the dying car industry. The entire of focus of the country is backward-looking. Not

Episode 1 of the @Econoclasts out now 👇 https://t.co/S8kFSbUTEd

Economics is a religion. Meet the heretics. Introducing the @Econoclasts, the new podcast from UnHerd where @YanisVaroufakis and Wolfgang Munchau (@EuroBriefing) cut through the spin and connect the dots between money, geopolitics, and the real forces shaping our future.

CO2 Coalition Chair Dr. William Happer discusses Climate "Science" on the Joe Rogan Experience

Remember the investment flows from the US to Europe – after Trump’s tariffs and the election of Merz? It’s all reversing now. US investors are slowing waking up to a political reality of political perma-gridlock in Europe. And Europeans investors are starting to realise the

It is virtually impossible to explain Javier Milei to a European. There is clearly no Milei-type character anywhere in European politics, not even lurking in the political underwood. One of the questions we are discussing in our briefing today is what will happen to the economic