'Chuck it in the fire.' A leading candidate in France's presidential race has a simple solution to its massive national debt: just cancel it - fortune.com

'Chuck it in the fire.' A leading candidate in France's presidential race has a simple solution to its massive national debt: just cancel it - fortune.com

Source: fortune.com

DW NOTE

France's debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 112%. The proposal isn't to restructure it or inflate it away — it's to declare €3.2 trillion in obligations void. Every French pension fund, life insurer, and regional bank holds government bonds as the risk-free asset. Voiding them doesn't erase the debt, it just moves the loss from the treasury to every balance sheet in the country. That's not a solution, it's a controlled detonation of the domestic financial system.

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