Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

Posted by consumer451 2 days ago

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Comments

Comment by nradov 2 days ago

Macron is making up numbers. Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns. Profitable investment opportunities in the EU remain slim and so far they seem uninterested in pursuing a growth policy.

Comment by bhouston 2 days ago

Politics drives decision making in addition to just seeking returns, especially for government affiliated funds, e.g.:

https://www.reuters.com/business/swedish-pension-fund-alecta...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danish-pension-fund-treasuries-...

(And remember that India and China combined reduced their holdings of US treasures by at least $50B in 2025: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/amid-global-... )

Canadian tourism visits to the US have dropped massively in the last year, not because Canadian tourist spots are better or more fun now (e.g. pure market forces), but again because of politics:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20251211-where-are-all-th...

Comment by dmix 1 day ago

The EU has $8T invested in US assets. That's not an easy choice like a soccer mom choosing to go to the Caribbean instead of Florida for a weekend. It's very serious business that needs real alternatives.

Comment by jacquesm 1 day ago

As long as they lose less than they lose by keeping it in $ they're coming out ahead.

Comment by dogma1138 1 day ago

They don’t have a choice, they sell they get back dollars. What are they going to swap 8 trillion dollars into? And an even better question how?

$8 trillion is about half the M3 of the Euro.

In fact there are only about 20 trillion dollars right now, there isn’t even enough liquidity to cash out.

Comment by bhouston 1 day ago

You definitely cannot do it all at once, all you can do is what China and India are doing, which is to slowly sell US treasuries over many years. China used to hold $1.3T of US treasuries but they now only hold just under $0.7T, thus about half has been sold. India similarly has reduced their holdings from $240B to $190 over the last year. It can be done, just not quickly.

Stocks generally survive currency devaluations, but treasuries do not. So I am not a fan of treasuries in this environment, but US stocks should be fairly resistant except for their dependency on the US economy, which could be disrupted in a currency devaluation.

Comment by dogma1138 1 day ago

Both of them are doing it under pressure from the US to reduce how much debt they owe.

Many of these securities do not have a secondary market that isn’t in the US. Push comes to shove the US can block a lot of these trades.

Comment by jacquesm 1 day ago

> Push comes to shove the US can block a lot of these trades.

If you really want to see a re-run of 1929 that would be the way to get it.

Comment by bhouston 1 day ago

> Both of them are doing it under pressure from the US to reduce how much debt they owe

Citation please?

Comment by bigbadfeline 1 day ago

> What are they going to swap 8 trillion dollars into?

For African raw materials, Chinese commodities and components, etc - like everybody else with lots of $$. If you're paying attention, that also means higher inflation in the US.

Thanks, GOP geniuses... of course the rich, of which the admin is full of, love inflation because it makes them richer. If you complain about something, they'd blame China and Maduro, mission accomplished!

Comment by nradov 1 day ago

Those are thin markets, and not necessarily even open to most EU investors. Also, good luck getting your investment back when there's another coup or civil war in the target country.

Major investors have always had some level of international diversification and that will continue. But this recent EU move won't have any significant impact.

Comment by bigbadfeline 1 day ago

> Those are thin markets, and not necessarily even open to most EU investors... coup or civil war in the target country.

I didn't say anything about "investing" in any closed markets or target countries. This isn't complicated but I'm sensing some entrenched and overly optimistic preconceptions getting in the way.

Comment by nradov 1 day ago

It becomes complicated pretty quickly if you're trying to deploy large amounts of capital into small, unsophisticated markets regardless of whether you label it "investing" or something else. But you seem to be confused about how this stuff works in the real world.

Comment by bigbadfeline 1 day ago

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Comment by Gud 1 day ago

For one, they can stop feeding Microsoft and other American conglomerates and develop Free Software alternatives.

Comment by dogma1138 1 day ago

Ok, but that doesn’t answer the question how do you cash out on $8 trillion dollars and convert them into another currency.

Comment by bhouston 1 day ago

India and China are buying gold: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/india-and-china-move.... Good time to be a gold bug.

Comment by nradov 1 day ago

There's literally not enough gold in the world to make a difference at those scales. And while gold can serve as a (relatively) safe store of value, ultimately investors need to earn returns and holding gold has negative cash flow.

Comment by toomuchtodo 1 day ago

You sell into the market and buy a replacement asset. Easy peasy. No need to sell all at once, you simply change your strategy to invest new capital elsewhere and slowly roll off existing debt ownership.

Over time, the US will need to find someone willing to buy new US debt as existing buyers and holders invest elsewhere.

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Comment by _DeadFred_ 1 day ago

This is talk about not investing more in the US though, is it not? Why it the top discussion so misconstrued about what is being said/reality? €300B <> $8T, yet somehow that is the discussion?

Comment by graemep 2 days ago

How much do EU government run funds invest in the US?

Comment by ffsm8 1 day ago

The governments can quiet easily influence private investment decisions by adding additional taxes to us-based market trades for example.

It'd be quiet easy if the EU governments actually wanted to do so - I'm not sure they actually do right now, however.

Comment by graemep 1 day ago

They can, but that invites retaliation. If they do it on all non-EU trades that is in effect an attack on investment in every non-EU economy. There are all sorts of consequences.

There are practical difficulties too. What is the investments are made through an off-shore subsidiary or by investing in a fund in the US? It might even encourage the latter (single trade to buy the fund instead of managing US investments) and mean management fees move to the US.

If they impose it on just US trades it might still be subject to the problems above and would be a very serious step and one investors will hate.

I think we might well end up with something like this and a return to more money going to national capital markets rather than global, but its not going to be an easy transition.

Comment by ilikehurdles 2 days ago

Contrary to the implication, the Swedish fund that possibly sold $8b of its $100b worth of US Treasuries did not cite politics as its reason for doing so, and no part of the article backs up that claim. Additionally, selling out of the US dollar as the fed aimed to cut rates and as the dollar declined from historic highs against the Euro seems sensible regardless of politics.

Denmark has been exiting foreign bonds for 10 years, down from a high of $24b in 2016 to $10b in 2025. It’s not only part of a trend, but the cited $100m of bonds sold makes up a negligible 0.00026% of US treasuries.

On that note, 1 USD buys nearly $1.40 CAD.

Politics makes it easy to write stories that paint an incomplete or incorrect picture.

Comment by dmix 1 day ago

To be fair, the Swedish pension fund specifically cited the US's "large budget deficits and growing government debt" for why they saw it as higher risk. That sort of thing is 100% politicians.

https://www.thestandard.com.hk/wealth-and-investment/article...

Comment by ptero 1 day ago

The cited rationale is a perfectly reasonable take.

But most of the world is in the same boat of "large budget deficits and growing government debt". It will be "interesting" for bond issuers and most investors and "exciting fishing" for hedge fund sharks over the next 10 years or so.

That said, I do not agree that it is 100% politicians. At least in the US, that path has been virtually unavoidable after the fiscal spending by G.W. Bush on the 9/11 wars and fully set in stone after 2008 subprime crisis. For the last 15+ years politicians could slow down or speed up the transit a little, but getting off that train has not been an option. My 2c.

Comment by downrightmike 1 day ago

Its worse than you think: The United States is currently experiencing a massive, accelerating debt crisis, with the gross federal debt surpassing $38 trillion as of late 2025.

It is growing by $1 trillion roughly every 82 days.

This debt level, which has exceeded 120% of the U.S. GDP,

Comment by bhouston 1 day ago

To be fair, the US has been growing its federal debt my whole life. It is one of those things that seems unsustainable but then it continues. Of course, it is sustainable because of US dollar dominance in the world and that may be faltering with Trump, especially if the Federal Reserve loses its independence.

Comment by rpdillon 1 day ago

Every sentence here seems reasonable, weird to see it gray.

I really do wonder what's going to end up happening with the debt...I think we've crossed the point of no return, but I'm not sure. Interest on the debt now exceeds military spending, and US military spending is about 40% of all NATO defense spending.

I've thought about this since I was young, and was fascinated that no one thought it was going to become a problem. There was a nice moment in the late 90s where the US reduced debt, but that was a blip.

Comment by torginus 1 day ago

Yeah politics or not, the US stock market has a very high exposure to just a couple tech companies, and many of these companies have a very high P/E, and likewise hugely invested in AI (which itself is a risk). Add to that the recent (entirely self-inflicted) geopolitical questions of US reliability, I think it's a smart idea to reduce US exposure in one's portfolio.

Circling back to AI, my (not politically motivated) opinion, is that most of the tremendous supposed value was priced in into AI stock back in 2024, with 2025 gains being either relatively modest or stagnant. With the risks involved, I think it's fair to expect that AI companies can go down a lot, but it's hard to imagine them going up by that much.

Like, for example if NVIDIA gained another $1T in market cap, that'd increase the stock price by 22%, but if they lost that much, it would make it go down by 36%. If we consider both outcomes equally likely (not suggesting this is a reasonable assumption), we're more likely to lose money.

Comment by Muromec 1 day ago

>Contrary to the implication, the Swedish fund that possibly sold $8b of its $100b worth of US Treasuries did not cite politics as its reason for doing so

Which doesn't mean it wasn't the reason.

Comment by ahartmetz 1 day ago

Maybe it was more because the president is a fool and less because he is a jerk?

Comment by hello_moto 1 day ago

> 1 USD buys nearly $1.40 CAD.

Right before Trump (2024), 1.42 CAD at the top. During Trump, barely hits 1.40 CAD, one time it touched 1.37 CAD.

Comment by abirch 2 days ago

Unfortunately the US Dollar is devaluing. In the past year the dollar went down by 11%. That means SP 500 which has gone up 13% in the past year has only gone up 2% for a European.

Comment by everybodyknows 1 day ago

The DXY dollar index:

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/.DXY?qsearchterm=dollar%20index

The big move down happened March-June.

Comment by ugh123 1 day ago

Coincides with major tariff actions by the admin

Comment by WarmWash 1 day ago

It's a matter of perspective, for the US administration, that 11% drop is reason for celebration.

Their goal is to make American blue collar manufacturing jobs viable again, and part of the plan is to make it cheaper for other countries to buy their goods.

It's not the first time the dollar has been intentionally devalued.

Comment by gizzlon 1 day ago

> Their goal is to make American blue collar manufacturing jobs viable again,

It's one of many stated reasons.

What the real reasons are is not really important IMO. But my money would be on something much more sinister and selfish

Comment by skybrian 1 day ago

This means that from a European point of view, US investments are 11% cheaper.

This could be attractive depending on your view of the future of the US dollar and US stock market.

Comment by realusername 1 day ago

Well no thanks, the US is going the same path Hungary and Turkey, just with a 10 year difference, autocrats are never good for business.

As soon as Trump came in power I sold all my dollars and I was wise to do it.

Expect things to go much more worse from here, this is only the beginning. For now the FED has relatively been untouched, it's not going to stay pristine forever.

Comment by gizzlon 1 day ago

yup, by going after Powell he is threatening the rest of them to vote the way he wants in the future.

While it would be great if people of the US started to show some backbone and resist this fascist takeower, I'm quite pessimistic. What's going on makes me really sad.

OTOH it's not too late!! We have seen trends like this turned around before.

Comment by cmxch 1 day ago

The so-called “fascist takeover” is resisting you.

Comment by yread 1 day ago

Not if the European invested in currency hedged vanguard sp500s

Comment by f1shy 2 days ago

The fact that the EUR/U$S parity did not change much means EUR devaluated about the same, doesn’t it?

Comment by nullhole 2 days ago

EUR/USD increased ~13% in the past year

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=1Y

Comment by chairmansteve 2 days ago

No the $ devalued against the euro by about 11% in the past 12 months. Look at a chart.

Comment by victorbjorklund 1 day ago

False. Dollar has crashed against Euro.

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Comment by the_mitsuhiko 2 days ago

> Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns.

You don't need to introduce capital controls to make it unattractive to invest in the US. There are plenty of options that the EU could pull that would make investments abroad very unpopular quickly.

Comment by baxtr 1 day ago

Like how…?

Comment by the_mitsuhiko 1 day ago

By taking inspiration from the US. The US has PFIC for instance and many other reporting requirements that make it more attractive to invest in the US than abroad.

Comment by alephnerd 1 day ago

Yea, but how?

The EU can barely get the Mercosur FTA out the door. How can it even attempt to make such a drastic change that would make FDI in the EU less attractive than equally large and equally onerous China?

And that ignores the fact that states like Poland, Ireland, and Czechia would ferociously fight back at anything that threatens their FDI driven economies.

Even Ireland opposed the Anti-Coercion Instrument [0] four days ago, and everyone still remembers Belgium's unilateral opposition to seizing frozen Russian assets barely a month ago.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/be-no-doubt-eu-will-ret...

Comment by the_mitsuhiko 1 day ago

That Europe is incapable of doing anything bold is a different topic. You don't have to tell me how fundamentally screwed we are because of the consensus issue. But Europe could, without introducing capital controls, implement something. The US did, there is no fundamental reason why Europe could not either.

It's just a question of political will

Comment by alephnerd 1 day ago

If something is hypothetically possible but practically impossible, then the mental exercise is a waste of time, and distracts from thinking about an actual solution.

For example, Trump could impeached and removed from office, but that isn't happening. So what's the solution?

Comment by the_mitsuhiko 1 day ago

I exclusively responded to a comment about capital controls, which are even less likely. I'm not particularly interested in a discussion about what politicans might or might not do.

Comment by pipes 1 day ago

I think if people were forced to invest their pensions in shitty EU stocks there would be push back. Also moving public sector pensions into EU stocks won't deliver the growth required, they are already unsustainable.

Comment by disgruntledphd2 1 day ago

But there's a chicken and egg effect here in that the stock prices are low because of low investment and the stocks are bad because the stock prices are low.

For instance, Meta has basically doubled in price from a few years back but their business is basically identical. Doesn't seem very efficient to me, at least.

Comment by rwmj 2 days ago

Those are capital controls by another name.

Comment by bryanrasmussen 2 days ago

but not necessarily capital controls by a similar legislative difficulty, although at this point it's somewhat abstract what is being discussed.

Comment by kmac_ 2 days ago

No idea what this number actually is. If it includes pension funds' investments in the US stock market and US bonds, then it is underestimated.

Comment by gogopromptless 2 days ago

Counter argument: people invest in bonds. Quite a lot of bonds in fact.

Picking up pennies in front of a steam roller and counterparty risk seem to be perennial favorites of youth, but I hazard to guess only a minority in the market have flesh yet untouched by fire.

Comment by ugh123 1 day ago

> investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns

Maybe. But they're allowed to avoid junk bonds and other "risky investments".

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Comment by hackable_sand 1 day ago

If American workers can properly organize general strikes then those investments look much less appealing.

Comment by tasuki 1 day ago

> Profitable investment opportunities in the EU remain slim

Is this investment advice?

Comment by nradov 1 day ago

Yes. You should only invest in profitable opportunities.

Comment by hackable_sand 1 day ago

This is presented axiomatically but it's trivially proven false.

Comment by pseudony 1 day ago

Yes, but also no.

Pension funds around these parts are big, we are often forced to pay into them. Years ago, I noticed they started advertising green funds. Would not be surprised to see options that exclude the US too.

If you look at Trumps polls across EU countries, it is heavily in the negative and a lot of us are wanting to put our money where our mouth is about it.

Comment by wtcactus 1 day ago

> Pension funds around these parts are big

Not really. Most EU countries don’t even have noticeable state pension funds (and one of the biggest culprits is actually France). They just rely on younger people to support the pensions of the retired ones.

Comment by crote 1 day ago

You're forgetting about private pension funds. Those are massive, and often mandated by a collective bargaining agreement.

Comment by wtcactus 1 day ago

Not in France they aren’t. And not in most EU countries that still rely in pay as you go pension systems.

For comparison. France’s pension funds (total public and private) are 12% of their GDP. Total EU pension funds are also around 20% of total EU GDP. USA pension funds are 170% of their GDP!!!

Comment by pseudony 1 day ago

It's not either-or, necessarily.

Yes, we have a pays-as-you-go pension system in Denmark (sigh). But regulations were also changed a while back such that employees must pay into a pension scheme of their own. In our case, that's handled via your employer and there's a minimum contribution limit and often incentives to pay a higher level.

((not my area of expertise))

Comment by hnlmorg 2 days ago

Maybe, but so does Trump. And that’s who these figures are really meant for.

I doubt it will make any difference though, because Trump is about as brain damaged as they come.

Comment by anovikov 2 days ago

Indeed it sounds a lot like Trump's bs, so Trump might buy it. It's almost like "those s**hole countries sending is their worst to eat our cats and dogs" or "subsidies we send every year to all over the world".

Comment by downrightmike 1 day ago

Similar thing to what the UK did post-Brexit?

Comment by neilwilson 2 days ago

Except in a floating exchange rate that isn’t what happens. For somebody to leave the Eurozone for the Dollar zone there has to be somebody coming in the opposite direction to exchange with.

Macron is still talking nonsense of course. The Euros never left in the first place.

Comment by michaelt 1 day ago

> For somebody to leave the Eurozone for the Dollar zone there has to be somebody coming in the opposite direction to exchange with.

Does that mean trade imbalances don’t exist?

Comment by neilwilson 1 day ago

Correct. They don’t. It’s an illusion caused by where the accounting boundary is drawn.

That’s why “imbalances” never close.

If goods and services were exchanged for little models of the Eiffel Tower nobody would say there was an imbalance. Yet we do when we exchange for Euros.

Comment by nine_zeros 2 days ago

> Macron is making up numbers

So is Trump. This is all just response to bullying.

"I got big muscles"

"Oh yeah, I got big muscles too"

This all is happening because America elected a criminal clown, twice.

Comment by godzillabrennus 2 days ago

Let me fix that for you. This is all happening because the institutions in America failed to deliver for working-class people for over four decades, and Americans got fed up, elected a billionaire willing to be a bulldozer of those institutions and the systems that work for knowledge workers, twice.

Comment by forty 1 day ago

And how does that work for them?

Comment by throwawaypath 1 day ago

Fantastic for my knowledge worker 401(k)!

Comment by hypeatei 1 day ago

Who knew that cutting taxes while keeping government spending high AND lowering interest rates could result in so much free money going around? That coupled with the dollar losing 10% of its value in a year, of course stocks are higher than before. Inflation and dollar losing value = winning!

Comment by vkou 1 day ago

Oh, and, of course, a deficit is a tax increase that's deferred to the future.

It's one thing to spend a deficit on something long-term useful, it's another thing to piss it away.

Comment by throwawaypath 1 day ago

>Who knew that cutting taxes while keeping government spending high AND lowering interest rates could result in so much free money going around?

That's been going on for many presidents in a row, in no way unique to Trump. Bush and Obama take the cake.

>That coupled with the dollar losing 10% of its value in a year

Is this some new virtue signal on BlueSky? USD is still trading in its channel at above historic averages. This is like saying the US market is crashing because we had a -2.5% day on Tuesday. Look at DXY and zoom out. It's been flat since May.

>of course stocks are higher than before. Inflation and dollar losing value = winning!

Three consecutive years of solid double digit market growth that has outpaced inflation and dollar valuation. Tell me you know nothing about financial markets without telling me you know nothing about financial markets.

Comment by hypeatei 19 hours ago

> That's been going on for many presidents in a row

You were attributing your "knowledge worker 401(k)" growth to Trump though?

> Is this some new virtue signal on BlueSky?

No, I'm not on BlueSky or any social media. Is this a poor attempt at some Trumper "own"?

> USD is still trading in its channel at above historic averages.

Look at the chart after "liberation day" in April. It's been down since then and stayed there. Not a very good sign for his policies.

> Three consecutive years of solid double digit market growth that has outpaced inflation and dollar valuation

I agree, Biden did well with covid recovery. Not sure how electing Trump did much for us other than cause a market crash in April (and subsequent dip buying) and weaken the USD?

> Tell me you know nothing about financial markets

Oh, I know plenty and I'm actually bullish on stocks because there is so much free money going around. It would be stupid not to have your money in assets with such high inflation on the horizon. I just find it funny that you're touting bad policy as a win when his whole campaign was about "Biden's inflation" causing high prices and Republicans are supposedly for being fiscally responsible yet the OBBB goes against that.

Comment by hello_moto 1 day ago

All politicians will say what people want to hear.

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

American voters elected the people who ran those institutions, or appointed the leaders of those institutions.

I know we all want it to be some shadowy cabal so we can pretend the average person didn't cause this, but it isn't. We did this to ourselves.

Comment by nine_zeros 1 day ago

> Let me fix that for you. This is all happening because the institutions in America failed to deliver for working-class people for over four decades, and Americans got fed up, elected a billionaire willing to be a bulldozer of those institutions and the systems that work for knowledge workers, twice.

Let me fix that for you. Billionaires conned working class into giving up everything for "low taxes". Working class suffered.

And then the same working class elected - get this - another billionaire conman - the same category that previously conned them.

Comment by TacticalCoder 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by victorbjorklund 1 day ago

> The only reason the IMF hasn't taken the reins of France yet is because France has the nuclear weapon and is the only country in the eurozone to have it, so they have some leverage with the other countries in the eurozone.

First of all IMF has nothing to do with the Eurozone. And second of all, we are Europeans. We don’t threaten to bomb our neighbors if they don’t give us what we want. That’s just a Russian/American thing.

Comment by matthewaveryusa 1 day ago

Only for the past 70 years. Before that europeans were the bomb-lobbing record holders.

Comment by victorbjorklund 1 day ago

Yes, that is true. In the past we were primitive like Russians/Americans.

Comment by rapnie 1 day ago

The EU being our peace project, which both Russia and the US now want to undo.

Comment by savant2 2 days ago

How many percentage of GDP is healthcare in the US? 10, 20%?

Healthcare is almost entirely public in France (pension also mostly are), so I'm not sure that your comparison makes sense.

Comment by dmix 1 day ago

Healthcare is about 17% in the US GDP and 30% of the federal budget. The US spends more on public healthcare as a % of GDP than almost all European countries, including France which spends about 12% of GDP on healthcare.

Comment by cayleyh 1 day ago

It's hard to get a comparable read since you don't get a clean split in the #s between what would be public spending vs. private spending if the US + a "Medicare for All" type system, but including the % of GDP spent in US on healthcare overall, it would put government expenditures as % of GDP on par with most other countries in the world that do provide universal health care:

* https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/... * https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

France certainly has a higher % of expenditure to GDP than other comparable countries, and you would expect the USA health care to GDP % to decline to be more inline with other countries with universal coverage if a national program was introduced.

However, because France is still offering more public social services and benefits overall vs. a "USA + universal health" that it's hard to make broad claims either way about who is wasting more money or which system is more effective for citizens based purely on % of government expenditure to total GDP.

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Comment by lejalv 2 days ago

meanwhile 6-week vacations, high speed trains, walkable cities, generous child benefits, and, well, quality of life salute you from here

Comment by petcat 2 days ago

All great things for sure. But the French economy has been stagnant for decades. There is no growth. One option would be to allow more immigration, but not allow the immigrants to have access to the public benefits. Obviously that is a divisive political issue they struggle badly with.

Comment by VWWHFSfQ 1 day ago

> the French economy has been stagnant for decades. There is no growth.

This is one of the biggest reasons why it is trivially easy for USA, China, and Russia to squeeze them (and the whole EU) from all sides.

Comment by ifwinterco 1 day ago

The issue is a lot of French people in the private sector (small businesses, contractors etc.) actually work really hard and often long hours to subsidise public sector employees barely working and retiring at 55.

At the end of the day, that just isn't sustainable politically and it's pretty questionable if it's morally correct either

Comment by WarmWash 1 day ago

6 week vacation?

Europe has been on a 30 year vacation, and it's starting to look like that vacation might need to end.

Comment by paganel 1 day ago

At some point the money runs out for all of that stuff, it seems that in France that's just about to happen.

Comment by withinboredom 2 days ago

One thing I remember from civics class: governments should think in terms of generations; not profits/losses.

Comment by thatguy0900 1 day ago

That's true, but you have to actually be investing in growth for it to come up. Instead the next generation will get both spiriling interest payments and crumbling infrastructure.

Comment by embedding-shape 2 days ago

> The only reason the IMF hasn't taken the reins of France yet is because France has the nuclear weapon and is the only country in the eurozone to have it, so they have some leverage with the other countries in the eurozone.

Haha, what? How is France having nuclear weapons leverage over other countries in the Eurozone? What kind of thing do you think the Eurozone or EU even is? We don't use threats of violence against each other in negotiations. France having nuclear weapons or not matters zilch in these conversations, because we're all allies.

Comment by charamis 1 day ago

> Haha, what? How is France having nuclear weapons leverage over other countries in the Eurozone? What kind of thing do you think the Eurozone or EU even is? We don't use threats of violence against each other in negotiations. France having nuclear weapons or not matters zilch in these conversations, because we're all allies.

Greece says hello!

Comment by embedding-shape 1 day ago

... did I miss something? I know there is plenty of financial and institutional coercion, don't get me wrong, but violent threats between nations within the Eurozone? When did that happen / what are you referencing?

Comment by direwolf20 2 days ago

Well they're right: The IMF routinely takes over countries that have too much debt, but it hasn't done this to France.

Comment by shmeeed 1 day ago

The IMF usually only gets involved in policy when countries borrow money from them. So far, France has not had to request such aid.

Comment by wat10000 1 day ago

Which ones?

Comment by thatguy0900 1 day ago

I took it to mean more that europe relies on France for nuclear deterrence against outside threats so treats them with gentle gloves more than Europe is afraid of France nuking them. Right now more than ever they really need someone with nukes on their side.

Comment by embedding-shape 1 day ago

> I took it to mean more that europe relies on France for nuclear deterrence against outside threats

Yeah, that tracks, re-reading with that interpretation makes it make a whole lot more sense than what I understood at first reading. Thanks a lot for helping me understanding it better!

Comment by triceratops 1 day ago

> How is France having nuclear weapons leverage over other countries in the Eurozone?

If there's one thing a bank is scared of, it's getting nuked. /s

Comment by soperj 1 day ago

Isn't the US running a deficit of 5.8% of their GDP as well?

Comment by thatguy0900 1 day ago

I think the issue here is that France can't print more euros to cover it, other countries have to cover it since they share currency they are all responsible for the debt

Comment by Havoc 2 days ago

TIL EU savings rate is far more than US. 18.79% vs 3.50%

Guessing that's somehow counting enforced deductions off paycheques. Would be a wild difference if not.

https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/personal-savings

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings

Comment by mrtksn 2 days ago

Even the poorest EU countries are actually surprisingly wealthy.

Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarian deposits reached 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate is also very high(%86 IIRC).

The life is pretty good for a GDP per capita of $18K.

Comment by torginus 1 day ago

Home ownership can be a deceptive stat in Eastern Europe - many people don't register their address at the place they rent - in part because they're renting it under the table.

Tons of folks also live with their parents into their 30s.

Comment by alecco 1 day ago

The Spanish taxman announced this week they will consider a taxable gift when adults live at their parents home. Anything to keep the juicy inflation-adjusted pensions and their votes.

When people talk about EU home ownership, savings, etc. they often neglect to mention the skew of the Boomer class. It really sucks for young people.

Comment by sgloutnikov 1 day ago

Those numbers are quite off. The total amount of Leva in circulation at the end of 2024 was round 30B. End of November 2025 in circulation around 23B.

Comment by mrtksn 1 day ago

Here’s a source: https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zon...

By the mid January %58 of the leva were removed from circulation BTW.

Comment by sgloutnikov 1 day ago

Total deposits in the bank accounts sure. I understood it as they deposited 100B of their cash into their bank accounts by November.

Comment by mrtksn 1 day ago

fair, edited for clarification

Comment by clickety_clack 1 day ago

The Europeans I know seem to save in actual bank savings accounts, whereas the Americans I know seem to invest their money. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I can't find a description of "savings" on those charts, so I think it might be ignoring American investments. To me, they are both types of investment, one a super safe option with a low return, and the other a more risky option with a higher return.

From that Draghi paper a year ago or so, I believe part of Europe's innovation problem seems to stem from a lack of private investment by individuals in this way, so that would also align with this different philosophy on dealing with savings.

Comment by torginus 1 day ago

Isn't it a huge issue for Europe, that stock revenue is heavily taxed, while pensions accounts (which make the same investments) are not?

Which means it makes more financial sense to put the money into pensions accounts?

Comment by Havoc 1 day ago

I’d be very surprised if that site wasn’t counting stocks as savings.

Comment by 4gotunameagain 1 day ago

When private individuals have their money in savings accounts, aren't the banks investing that money anyway ?

Comment by clickety_clack 1 day ago

Practically, yes. But in economics they often classify “savings” only as being in a bank account. So if you “save” money in a 401k, where it’s invested in stocks, bonds or ETFs or whatever, then it’s not recorded as savings because they consider that “investment”. So when someone says EU saving is 18.79% vs US saving of 3.50%, most of the wealth saved by Americans isn’t showing up in that comparison because it’s not in a bank account.

Comment by 4gotunameagain 1 day ago

If it is just a matter of classification, then why would part of the problem lie on lack of private investment, when private savings are invested by the banks themselves ?

I think a big a part is that a lot of EU money is invested in the US instead, and I am looking forward for that to stop..

Comment by clickety_clack 1 day ago

There’s a whole lot of regulation around the types of investment a bank can make with the money. Most of it has to be low risk mortgages, loans and high quality bonds.

Comment by 4gotunameagain 1 day ago

Makes sense, thanks !

Comment by seszett 2 days ago

There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe.

3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.

Comment by Epa095 1 day ago

It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead).

1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Comment by seszett 1 day ago

It's not clear to me either, but as I understand it it doesn't include pensions because social contributions are not part of "disposable income".

I think that "the net adjustment for change in pension entitlements" is there to take into account the expected reduced future income from pension entitlements dwindling over time (edit: in effect, making pensions count as negative savings) somehow, but it's unclear.

I looked for another perspective but the French national bank doesn't mention pensions in its explanations[0].

[0] https://www.banque-france.fr/system/files/2024-08/epargne-de...

Comment by victorbjorklund 1 day ago

Sounds like they don’t count that. They seem to only count disposable income and payments the company does to your retirement aren’t really disposable

Comment by mkjs 1 day ago

The UK has "enforced savings" in the form of auto-enrollment pensions for over 10 years. Looks like Ireland is just starting to do it too.

Comment by swarnie 1 day ago

That's mostly to prepare teenagers at the time for having no state pension in 50 years.

I have about seven of the buggers and I'm only in my mid 30s.....

Comment by frameset 1 day ago

Pensions or teenagers?

Comment by thatguy0900 1 day ago

There is a very large and growing portion of the US that maintains no savings at all. In fact it's the opposite and many are slowly spending their way into perpetual credit card debt.

Comment by direwolf20 1 day ago

It's essential to the way the system works. One person's money is another person's debt. Normally the government would take on enough debt to ensure everyone had money, but the USA is a weird case.

Comment by lotsofpulp 1 day ago

Money and debt are just mechanisms to allocate resources. The government can print infinite money like Zimbabwe and it wouldn’t matter if there aren’t enough resources to allocate.

Comment by Hamuko 2 days ago

According to some sources, 1 in 4 Americans don't/can't save at all.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-e...

Comment by jochem9 1 day ago

In the US people take on personal debt for something like a car. In the Netherlands (where I live) this is very uncommon: people save up, then buy it.

Comment by thatguy0900 1 day ago

Our public transportation infrastructure is so badly managed that many jobs will ask you if you have reliable transportation and fire you if you find yourself without it. If your car breaks here it's often not really a option to save up for a bit first.

Comment by samiv 1 day ago

Part of "freedom", yes?

Comment by microtonal 1 day ago

Also helps that most people don't start with an extremely large student loan when they have finished their education.

Comment by ews 1 day ago

It helps that Europeans can go to a hospital or take an ambulance without having to open a GoFundMe account.

Comment by apexalpha 1 day ago

You would think the chance of this happening would increase the saving rate, no?

Comment by Hamuko 2 days ago

This doesn't surprise me at all as an European. My mind struggles to understand how so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Comment by pas 1 day ago

that's true to some extent, but at this point it's mostly a meme (at least the 60% number was)

> In 2023, 54 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or “rainy day” fund—unchanged from 2022 but down from a high of 59 percent of adults in 2021.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-repor...

via

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-...

Comment by Havoc 1 day ago

That’s way higher than I’d have guessed. Maybe there is some sort of bimodal distribution happening there. Half the pop is flat broke the other has multiple months of buffer

Comment by torginus 1 day ago

I'd argue accumulating too much wealth compared to your salary can be a bad thing - for example, real estate compared to salary is even more expensive in Europe than the US - so the extra money doesn't go anywhere useful, you just get to pay more for the same stuff.

Also, if the US person pays less taxes, but has to pay for a bunch of services that the EU person would get for free, that means the US person has a lower savings rate, even though they're paying for the exact same stuff.

Comment by coffeebeqn 1 day ago

Retirement accounts are more like social security than 401k. There’s no set amount of euros set aside for me it’s all in the pool paying for older peoples retirement

Comment by pas 1 day ago

it's true, lot of money is sitting in safe assets in banks

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/date/2024/html/ecb.in2...

see also https://archive.md/xaiLU

"Europe’s AI ambitions are running into a markets plumbing problem

The region lacks the depth of long-dated investment capital needed to fund required energy infrastructure"

Comment by skybrian 1 day ago

And yet there's no lack of demand for US investments, because they're attractive to foreign investors. (This is the flip side of trade deficits.)

I wonder how much of EU savings is invested in foreign countries?

Comment by direwolf20 2 days ago

The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. Sure, they can print more euro but when so much stuff they need is traded in USD, that's not nearly as effective as when the US prints more USD.

Comment by jacquesm 1 day ago

> The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs.

That only works if there are takers for US bonds otherwise all this will do is devalue the USD.

Comment by direwolf20 1 day ago

That's the US's exorbitant privilege which no other country has.

Comment by charles_f 2 days ago

If like me you are wondering why the sunglasses, it looks like he is using that to mask an eye infection.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-emman...

Comment by pupppet 2 days ago

Probably just a broken blood vessel in the eye.

Comment by pupppet 1 day ago

Not sure why this was downvoted, his people literally just confirmed this.

Comment by jll29 1 day ago

There once was a lady in France,

Whose right fist struck as if by chance;

  Her husband, called M...on,

  Said his eyesight was gone,
“Just an eye infection, come on!”

Comment by onraglanroad 1 day ago

Is this a really bad attempt at a Limerick or some other form I'm not familiar with?

Comment by consumer451 2 days ago

Related:

> Savings and investments union

https://finance.ec.europa.eu/regulation-and-supervision/savi...

Comment by ChrisArchitect 2 days ago

Please update the link to https://streamable.com/m4dejv or the transcript of the entire speech https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-a...

Comment by tchalla 2 days ago

The EU can’t even get a Mercosur deal closed after 30 years. I think this will probably happen in another 60 years.

Comment by victorbjorklund 1 day ago

I thought Americans today are pro-tariffs and against free trade? US is still unable to get a free trade deal with mercosur.

Comment by alephnerd 1 day ago

OP isn't American.

It's hard to overstate how much a beating the EU's reputation took after the Mercosur fiasco.

Lula took a massive political risk to push the EU-Mercosur FTA despite the power behind the throne in Brazil being wooed/bribed by the Trump admin [0] and already on the fence about the EU-Mercosur FTA because they are Ag Barons that primarily trade with the US and China [1] AND during a hotly contested election year.

This only makes the EU look like a less attractive negotiating partner, and incentivizes countries to unilaterally negotiate with individual EU states instead of the EU as a whole, thus undermining the entire EU.

If the EU alienates China, the US, Russia, Brazil, India, ASEAN, Japan, Korea, etc who else is left?

That is the whole crux of Carney and Zelenskyy's speeches at Davos.

> US is still unable to get a free trade deal with mercosur

Instead, we get an REE extraction deal in Brazil [2], financial backing for our current Venezuela escapade [0], and a president exporting Hispanic American-style far right politics into EU member states like Spain [3] and Italy [4] where right-leaning South Americans have become a major political voting bloc.

The more isolated the EU becomes, the easier it is for countries to begin taking advantage of European nations on their terms.

Edit:

The EU is now unfreezing and ratifying the US-EU trade deal [5]

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-18/brazil-s-...

[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/d293237e-e39f-4f4c-89e7-4c52cf937...

[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/401a9e84-3034-4375-bf39-56b92500c...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-far-right-vox-ho...

[4] - https://cebri.org/revista/en/artigo/172/javier-milei-and-the...

[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/eu-plans-...

Comment by f1shy 2 days ago

What makes it more ridiculous, is that fact that we from the EU are shouting US is getting isolated, but some of the biggest economies in the world do not want to trade with 4 countries from the 3rd world, because we think will get bankrupt because of that.

Comment by forty 1 day ago

I'm sure everyone would be happy to purchase stuff that respect our own standards. We forbid our farmers to use some chemicals because they are bad for health and nature, it would be completely stupid to start purchasing food abroad that is made using those chemicals, don't you agree?

Comment by f1shy 1 day ago

Sorry, the standards imposed to meat from south america is way higher than the European. Wine is nearly impossible. And spicies like paprika also require higher standards than in Europe. I don’t know what you mean with that. Free trade does not mean there are no standards to met. Same standards will be imposed (as are already imposed) to anything imported in the EU. Also in south America, because of size you don’t need nearly as much chemicals as in EU anyway.

Last but not least, that of quality standards and chemicals doesn’t hold anyway, as there are already loads of products coming from those countries already… I look always where things come from, and fruits come up to 80% from South America (including Mercosur). Dang even apples from Argentina in Germany, which is frankly non sense to me! It’s just not about quality, is good all protectionism and imposing tariffs, just as Trump is doing, but if we do, is ok.

Yes, I agree with the standards, but has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the agreement Mercosur/EU. The standard will be imposed for ANY product sold in the EU, doesn't matter where it comes from, as it should be.

Comment by forty 1 day ago

Do you have sources for what you say for meat for example? From what I could read on this topic, they don't have the same traceability constraints, may use growth hormones that are forbidden here, etc.

To add to the absurdity, one of the thing we Europeans will be able to export more to SA is chemicals, including those which we forbid here because they damage health and environment...

Comment by f1shy 1 day ago

Ask the owners of this shop:

https://www.mate-tee.de/en/

Or people exporting meat I happen to know. Independent of all requirements for anything in the EU, that of course has to be met, they will ask for lots of things above and beyond. That is the reality of the market. If you want to play with such a big market, it won’t be easy.

I know a guy who had paprika plantation, wanted to sell to Germany. They asked conserved samples of the last 20 years to guarantee consistency. That is just not normal.

Comment by forty 1 day ago

Ah yes ok, that some high quality importers are careful and asking higher standards I totally believe it, and can easily understand that they might ask even more guarantees than from the farm next to them.

But there are always buyers for the cheapest products too.

Comment by alephnerd 1 day ago

> but some of the biggest economies in the world do not want to trade with 4 countries from the 3rd world,

It's this attitude that makes non-Europeans (especially those of us without European heritage) less sympathetic to European pleas of support, yet it's your politicians that try to sign a defense pacts with "third world countries" like India [0]

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/eu-proceed-security-defe...

Comment by machomaster 1 day ago

You should understand what the term "third-world" means. It is not the synonym for a "developing country", let alone "shithole country".

Comment by alephnerd 1 day ago

You and I both know in what context they used that statement. Enjoy getting offshored.

Comment by machomaster 21 hours ago

Offence is taken, not given. I think it's an overreaction trying to find something to get offended about, instead of seeing the essence of what the parent was trying to clumsily say.

Comment by unglaublich 1 day ago

*We = farmers, their lobby, and their simps.

Comment by paganel 1 day ago

It's because of agriculture and us here in Europe losing our food-related resilience because of that. The tertiary sector won't save you in case of a continental blockade and the Argentinian/Brazilian grain suddenly becoming unavailable. "We'll go back to our farmers here in Europe!" Oops, you've just pushed them into bankruptcy a few years ago as a result of Mercosur, so good luck with that.

Comment by direwolf20 1 day ago

What happens to bankrupt farms? Are they converted into national forests?

Comment by paganel 1 day ago

Probably real estate. You also lose the tools, and the people, and the know-how.

Comment by f1shy 1 day ago

Well that doesn’t seem to matter in another areas of the economy… meanwhile in Germany we are experiencing an historical de-industrialization. I don’t see nearly as much fuss about that.

Comment by machomaster 1 day ago

Severely downsizing or shutting down the military production, how has it been working to get it running again so far? And now imagine if Germany wouldn't have the luxury of hiding behind the Ukrainian/American/Polish/Finnish backs and would have to actually fight the war at the same time.

Well, returning the food production while the population is starving would have been an even harder problem.

Comment by f1shy 1 day ago

The amount of erosion and heavy use of fertilizer doesn’t seem so good in the long run.

Comment by paganel 1 day ago

Are you talking about Argentina or France?

Comment by f1shy 1 day ago

Wait... did I change thread or what... wasn't the discussion about EU / Mercosur? Why do you pick these 2 countries?

Comment by pipes 1 day ago

Can someone explain what he is actually suggesting? What $300B he is talking about, and on what it will be invested in instead.

Also why is he wearing sunglasses?

Comment by darkhorn 1 day ago

I think $300B is about everything. Pension funds, investment, military spending etc.

The glasses are due to eye redness.

Comment by toomuchtodo 2 days ago

https://streamable.com/m4dejv

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by pantalaimon 2 days ago

So no more MSCI World in Europe?

Comment by torlok 1 day ago

Individual investors can buy whatever they want. The idea is to be competitive with the US, so that indices like MSCI World are more than just thinly-veiled S&P500 indices.

Comment by lysace 2 days ago

Love that MEGA acronym someone dropped in the comments. I need a blue hat with a golden MEGA lettering embroided.

Comment by anonnon 1 day ago

Why link to some reddit thread? I watched the video, and he described divestment from US bonds and equities. Those are easily some of the most desired, and consequently overvalued, securities on the planet. If European divestment actually exerts downward price pressure, that would mean ordinary Americans investing for retirement would be able to buy them up cheaper. Is that a bad thing? Also, it would mean Europeans would be less able to reap the benefit these corporations' profits and growth.

Comment by paganel 1 day ago

So, how is this going to work? Is he talking about the French Ministry of Economics and Finance? About the Banque de France? About the the ECB? Afaik the last two are, nominally at least, independent, while Macron is just a politician representing one of the 27 EU countries, so what authority does he have? What do the political leaders of Latvia think about this? Or of Malta?

Comment by wtcactus 1 day ago

So, the president of a socialist country (a country where the government spenditure is 57% of the total GDP is a socialist country [1]) is now saying their citizens that they will be stopped from investing the little money the state allows them to keep wherever they want, and be forced to invest in their faulty economy.

That’s it, right?

There’s a reason Europeans mostly invest in US stocks: they are much more profitable because the US doesn’t tax to death and regulates to death their own companies. Maybe France and the rest of the EU should try the same.

[1] https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2381414

Comment by tchalla 2 days ago

Foor shure

Comment by Hamuko 2 days ago

For those unaware of the context, there's a banger tweet: https://x.com/neilzegh/status/2013679440362975315

Comment by throwaway132448 1 day ago

Have you tried Reddit?

Comment by littlecranky67 1 day ago

Funny that of all people, Macron says that. Just a few months back, France government bonds lost their AAA rating because Macron refuses to pass legislative reforms. All while the EU biggest powerhouse economy - Germany - has remained stagnant or is even shrinking. Good luck convincing investors to not buy US bonds with that outlook.

Comment by abirch 2 days ago

When will the EU understand that they have the GOAT Paul Graham across the channel in the UK?

Open YCombinator Paris or London: Capital would flow to him.

Comment by g-mork 2 days ago

drop capital gains tax on EU stonks and watch the flight. there are a million ways they could make this attractive

Comment by withinboredom 2 days ago

If you are rich enough, it isn’t rocket science to avoid capital gains taxes in the EU. And by rich enough, just a few hundred K. (See the related FIRE Reddit boards)

Comment by unmole 2 days ago

> drop capital gains tax on EU stonks

Right, because it's not like France already has a large primary deficit or anything.

Comment by Muromec 1 day ago

confused sounds in voiced glottal fricative What capital gains tax?

Comment by victorbjorklund 1 day ago

In general those things work pretty bad. Then someone will just make an EU company that owns US shares to do a tax arbitrage.

Comment by throwaway132448 1 day ago

PG is obsolete.