Planet Money · Saturday, October 31, 2026
Economists and market participants are warning that France is facing a potential debt crisis as investors demand higher interest rates to lend money to the government. NYU professor and French government advisor Thomas Philippon explains that France's debt-to-GDP ratio has reached around 120 percent, while political dysfunction and mass cost-of-living protests make fiscal reform difficult.
“These scary whispers are not just coming from politicians. They're not just coming from economists. They are coming from the market itself, from all the people that France is trying to borrow money from. Those investors have started to worry that the French government might not pay them back,”
“The interest rate went from 3-ish percent to almost 5 percent. It's the highest that France has had to pay since the 2000s.”