Podcast · Puheenaihe 719 · 2026-10-31 · 1:44:57 · In Finnish
France's Debt Crisis and the Future of the Euro — Sami Miettinen on Puheenaihe
Published as “Ranskan talouskriisi, velkaantuminen ja euromaiden tulevaisuus (Sami Miettinen) | Puheenaihe 719”
Hosted by: Rami Kurimo
Sami Miettinen joined Puheenaihe host Rami Kurimo for an hour and three quarters on France: Europe’s most indebted economy, €3,600bn of public debt at 119% of GDP, a 5% deficit, zero growth and a presidential election in spring 2027 that offers a choice between Le Pen and the far left.
The structural argument comes first. A left-wing spending government used to cost a country a little, because investors had nowhere else to put their money but government bonds, property and equities. Now they can lend to Google, Anthropic or SpaceX instead, which Sami considers less risky than France, so the switching point has become steep. AI sharpens it: when a €5,000 salary costs an employer €9,000 a month and AI inference can only be taxed through VAT, raising taxes on human labour accelerates its replacement, and the tax base shrinks whatever the government does.
His most likely scenario — a forecast, labelled as one — is that Le Pen wins, a Meloni-style stabilisation buys perhaps a year, and there is no Greek-style write-down; instead the ECB buys French debt onto its balance sheet and the euro is inflated into softer money. He calls that the most humane of four unpleasant options, the others being restructuring, parallel currencies and a federal Europe. A long passage revisits the Greek rescue from Finland’s side — the EFSF and ESM, Finland’s roughly €12.6bn of guarantees, the order in which creditors were repaid — and credits Greece for the reforms it carried out afterwards.
The conclusion is a negotiator’s: Finland should hold its position, set up a team before the crisis, and insist on at least its capital-key share (about 2%) of any ECB purchase programme — about €20bn of its roughly €260bn debt in a €1,000bn programme.
Chapters
- 0:00 — “The left-wing choice”
- 4:09 — The consequences of borrowing
- 8:22 — Printing money
- 10:56 — Inflation and the policy rate
- 14:17 — The French economy
- 16:57 — French debt and deficit
- 21:09 — Raising taxes
- 25:59 — The size of the public sector
- 36:09 — Voters
- 45:43 — Raising the retirement age
- 48:34 — France’s options
- 54:26 — The impact on Finland
- 57:08 — What the ECB does
- 59:52 — Buying bonds
- 1:07:37 — The Greek rescue
- 1:17:48 — “3,600 billion”
- 1:21:06 — The euro
- 1:27:00 — The future
- 1:35:15 — Market reaction
- 1:39:07 — How Finland should prepare
The recording lives on Puheenaihe’s own channel and they own it. This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. Timestamps follow the chapter marks Puheenaihe published with the episode; the episode was recorded on 30 October 2026 and published on 31 October 2026.
Sami has discussed the euro’s design on Puheenaihe before, with Juhana Vartiainen on the ECU-2 basket as an alternative to the euro, and on inflation and fiscal dominance.
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