Learn 50+ years of economics in only 7 weeks: https://www.skool.com/stevekeen/about Business inquiries: leah@krugercowne.com Support my work: https://donateopen.com/@profstevekeen France has run a budget deficit for 51 straight years. In 2001, its government debt sat at 62% of GDP the lowest it had been since the euro was created. Today it’s 118%, almost double the ceiling Europe set for itself. Every headline tells the same story: the country spent too much, the bill is due, and the students in the streets are the symptom. Steve Keen the economist who predicted the 2008 crash before it happened says that story is backwards. He has studied debt for decades, and the number he says nobody in Brussels will name is the one that actually matters: French private debt sits nearly 100% of GDP higher than the public debt politicians fight over, and since the euro began, it has grown twice as fast. Meanwhile French per-capita growth fell from 2.9% a year before the euro to 1% after it and 0.6% in 2025. To stay inside the eurozone’s 3% deficit limit, the French government slashed social spending, education included. Classrooms without teachers. Science labs cancelled for lack of equipment. Buildings left to decay. That is what triggered the student riots. This is the story of how a set of rules sold as stability delivered the opposite and why the economist who saw 2008 coming says the euro itself is the thing that has to go. ✅ Why are there riots in France right now, and why does the real answer have almost nothing to do with the protests themselves? ✅ What are the student riots actually about and how does a 3% budget line decide whether a school gets teachers or a science lab gets equipment? ✅ Why has France’s growth stalled at 0.6% while China, running deficits twice the European limit, grows almost nine times faster? ✅ Why do economists and politicians demonize the smaller debt and ignore the bigger one? ✅ And why has inflation been lower in China than in France since 2020, when every textbook says the opposite should happen? Watch to the end: the last conclusion is the one almost nobody in Europe is willing to say out loud. France riots explained: the French protests, the Paris riots, and France burning are not a spending story they are a debt story. This video breaks down the France economy, the France debt crisis and the eurozone crisis using World Bank data on French per-capita growth, France government debt, French private debt and the 3% deficit rule, with economist Steve Keen on why Europe economy policy has stalled, what the European Central Bank’s 2% inflation target actually did, and why the cost of living crisis across Europe traces back to a system built in the 1990s. If you follow France news, France protest coverage, France economy analysis, or the wider debt crisis in Europe, this is the explanation the headlines leave out.