Cancel French debt held by the ECB? Why stop there if there is no cost to canceling ECB-held sovereign debt? The Banque de France could simply buy all of the French outstanding sovereign debt and cancel it.
If the BdF buys the entire €3.5tn stock, it funds the purchase with €3.5tn of reserves.** The debt isn't cancelled. It's been converted from ~8-year fixed-rate debt into overnight floating-rate debt. You haven't retired the liability. You've shortened its duration dramatically.
[**A thought experiment.The BdF can't do this, at least not when France is in the Eurozone.]
If you then canceled the debt, the BdF no longer earns any coupons on all the debt it had bought, but it's still paying interest on all of reserves held at BdF, which it issued to fund the purchases. The BdF isn't just paying the interest on reserves French banks happen to hold. It's also paying interest on that TARGET-2 liability to the Eurosystem. Without any coupon income from its bond holdings. Negative carry on €3.5 tn. That does not seem like a great plan. Maybe this is not a free lunch?
Back to reality. Roughly 90% of the Eurosystem's French government bond holdings currently sit on the Banque de France's own book. Only about 10% was bought by the ECB itself, and that slice is the only part subject to risk sharing .
So take the hypothetical €600bn held by the Eurosystem (illustrative numbers):
~€540bn is BdF's, at BdF's risk. France cancelling it is France forgiving itself. Zero net gain, and BdF's equity absorbs the whole hole. Now, you could recapitalize the Banque de France. That's going to cost French taxpayers. Or, if you don't (risky move), the French Treasury receives no dividend from the BdF for decades. Either way, there is cost to French taxpayers that offsets the benefit of lower coupon payments on the bonds.
~€60bn is the ECB's. Losses there are distributed by capital key. France's key is roughly 20%, so France would bear ~€12bn and the other members ~€48bn.
The only way this cancelation proposal makes any fiscal sense is if the BdF stops paying interest on reserves at BdF, mostly held by French banks. Otherwise you lock in negative carry for the BdF. But if you do that, that's a dramatic tax on French depositors and savers. That's what economists call financial repression. (And you've essentially monetized the debt).
Actually, France no longer even has this instrument because the reserve remuneration is decided by the ECB Governing Council, and it applies to the whole Eurosystem. If France did try to do something like this, banks would move their reserves to the Bundesbank in Frankfurt and France would end up with an even larger Target-2 liability.
During COVID, central banks were running huge balance sheets without articulating the trade-offs that are involved. And ex post they were framing any inflation that resulted as supply shock-driven without compelling evidence. If you do that, people might just believe you. They might really think that there are no trade-offs even if they should know better.
And, of course, this proposal violates a bunch of treaties and rules and regulations and laws. Art. 123 TFEU is the monetary financing prohibition. There is no separable "ECB tranche" to cancel. Those bonds are fungible with every other bond in the same series. So any cancellation would be a restructuring of the debt.
On ouvre lundi matin avec les taux à plus de 4%, pas un mot sur les chaînes d'infos alors que nous sommes à l'aube d'un carnage économique de grande ampleur.
Bonjour !
Petit rappel que la France, dans la politique ultra libérale qu’on lui connaît vient de perdre 2 places au classement des libertés économiques et se place désormais 65eme derrière le Vietnam, pays communiste sous parti unique.
Bonne journée ✨
La fameuse politique « hyper libérale » de Macron qui a réussi à faire monter la part de dépenses publiques à son record absolu (57,2% du PIB)
Je vous en supplie arrêtez d’utiliser des mots au hasard que vous avez entendu sur Tik Tok quand vous connaissez rien à rien
En ce jour de grève de la SNCF, rappelons que le montant de son régime spécial des retraites, à 5,5 milliards d’euros, représente à lui seul une grosse moitié de tout le budget de la Justice de la France.
Vivement @Nouv_Energie !
Depuis la révolution d'Octobre 1917, le marxisme-léninisme (et ses variantes) ont été essayés dans environ 36 pays.
Tous ont échoué. La plupart ont fait marche arrière devant la paupérisation généralisée.
1 Français sur 5 croit encore « qu’on n’a pas essayé. »
C’est pour cela que la discussion économique est une perte de temps totale. Produire N rapports montrant TOUS que ces mesures ne marchent jamais et nuisent in fine aux plus modestes n’a AUCUN effet sur les discours. Parce qu’il s’agit de croyances religieuses, pas de rationalité. C’est non falsifiable au sens de Popper.
Bonjour @EmmanuelMacron et cher @SebLecornu chez nous dans l’Orne on ne je comprend pas pourquoi @auroreberge est à #Cannes , et d’ailleurs qui paye son séjour , en cette petite de disette budgétaire !
Y’a 5 personnes à isoler dans le pays pour être 100 % efficace…
… mais ils pondent un protocole tout pété, où les 5 sont dispatchés partout, et vivent avec leurs familles qui, elles, pourront sortir (avec des délais d’incubation de 6 semaines) 🤡
Monde de zinzins…
En 2020, @TotalEnergies a perdu 7 milliards de dollars, et n’a sollicité ni reçu aucune aide de l’état. Personne n’a proposé de les compenser. Personne n’a parlé de “super pertes” à socialiser…
What a grim look for Ligue 1 that is
Lens opposed it, as they’ll now have to have a 2 week break and then play every 3 days, and also lose the opportunity to play PSG between 2 big UCL games
Which clearly benefits PSG with a bigger squad in a title race. It’s farmers league stuff
And the fact PSG tried to blame Hillsborough when the schedule is identical to Barcelona vs Atletico in the other UCL tie, and they played this trick against Chelsea too.
Disgraceful
🔴Municipales 2026 : Rémi Gaillard, candidat à Montpellier, a été menacé au revolver par le cabinet du maire PS Michaël Delafosse ; silence total du côté de la presse locale. Rémi Gaillard dénonce une "presse locale aux ordres".
Ravi de payer un abonnement @ligue1plus et de voir qu'il sert à payer des LLM défaillants.
Sérieusement, vous regardez les matchs que vous diffusez ? #RCSARCL