France continues to go into debt at a negative rate and it is surprising because it is an opportunity for the country. This is both good and bad news: France will go into debt in unprecedented proportions to deal with the crisis, but it is doing so in excellent conditions ...
France, this year, will have to borrow 245 billion euros to deal with the crisis. This figure does not tell you much, unless I tell you that it represents almost 3 years of income tax revenue. This 245 billion debt is also practically the equivalent of all the net tax revenues of the State over a year: income tax, VAT, corporate taxes etc. So you see, the crisis with its procession of plans to finance, aid, short-time working, etc., we will pay for it with an impressive increase in debt.
The good news is that this debt does not cost us dear…
Thanks to the interest rate morphine: when France goes into debt over 2 years, 5 years and even 10 years, it does so at negative interest rates. It is important to note that this is fairly recent: at the start of the 2010 decade, we were still in debt at rates close to 3%. Today, we are less than zero. It's better than free credit. So we take advantage. This is why the government was able, without creating cold sweats, to announce a plan to support the economy of 45 billion euros, knowing that one could easily borrow this amount on the financial markets. All states do the same. The world has entered an incredible headlong rush… and no one knows how these mountains of debt will be paid off.