“The unnerving thing about what we're seeing in France is that what's happening there rhymes with a lot of what's been happening here in Washington. You think the French government has a lot of debt? The U.S. government has more debt. You think France is running huge budget deficits every year? We are running even bigger deficits. … The most important thing that the U.S. still has right now is credibility. Somehow, people still think that despite all our government borrowing, all our deficit spending, all our political dysfunction, that the U.S. is going to turn it around someday, eventually.”
Planet Money · Money & Markets · October 2026
Context
Closing an episode on why bond markets have turned on France, the host compares France's position with America's. After listing the differences, he names credibility as the thing the US still has and France has lost.
Transcript
…fixing its debt problem now or it lets the problem get worse. And then it maybe becomes an emergency and France might have to make sudden harsh cuts to the budget. Now, the thing is, if you do it stupidly and you have to do it very fast, you may end up cutting spending more than you would have to,
and you're going to hurt more people, in particular, people who are more vulnerable. So that I find painful because that's unnecessary and unfair.
And as an American, not to make this all about the U.S., but I think that the unnerving thing about what we're seeing in France is that what's happening there rhymes with a lot of what's been happening here in Washington. You think the French government has a lot of debt? The U.S. government has more debt. You think France is running huge budget deficits every year? We are running even bigger deficits. You think French politics is dysfunctional. I mean, look around. Of course, the U.S. is different from France in some key ways. For one, we control our currency. The dollar still has enormous international cachet. Also, the U.S. economy is growing faster than in France. But the most important thing that the U.S. still has right now is credibility. Somehow, people still think that despite all our government borrowing, all our deficit spending, all our political dysfunction, that the U.S. is going to turn it around someday, eventually.
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This episode of Planet Money was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kessler and edited by Marianne McCune. It is fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore and Sierra Juarez. Jimmy Keeley and Travis Hagen engineered the show. Alex Goldmark is the executive producer of Planet Money. I'm Erika Beras. And I'm Jeff…
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