October 22, 2026  | By Katrin Bennhold |
Good morning, world. When government debt gets out of hand, it’s a problem. In the run-up to the French Revolution, the French monarchy was heavily indebted and losing the ability to borrow from international bankers. Then the price of bread spiked, and the rest, as they say, is history.
What’s happening in France today is not a revolution. But the combination of weak government finances, investors worried about getting repaid and angry citizens is as explosive as ever — not just in France, but in many countries. Today my colleagues Eshe Nelson and Jim Tankersley write about something called the populism-bond market “doom loop.” Read on.
Also:
| Russia releases an American Why Venezuelan towers collapsed On the menu: raw liver and roadkill |
 |
| In Paris on Saturday. Stephanie Lecocq/Reuters |
A vicious cycle of debt and populism
By Eshe Nelson and Jim Tankersley
When protests over high gas prices ripped through France in 2018, President Emmanuel Macron offered about $11 billion in tax cuts and wage increases to try to quell the unrest.
He can’t do that this time around.
Today, protests that initially began over education have turned violent. But Macron is no longer in a position to throw money at the problem.
That’s because the French government is also fighting the prospect of a crisis in its bond market. Investors have been dumping French debt, unsure of the government’s ability to manage its budget amid high interest rates and political uncertainty; announcing a big financial commitment to mollify protesters would most likely only rattle investors further.
Macron, in other words, is in a tight spot. Do nothing, and the protests could continue. Spend more, and he could ultimately leave France with even less money for areas like education, by making borrowing even more expensive. Both scenarios would most likely add to the momentum of the populist politicians running for his seat next year.
Trapped between angry citizens and wary investors, Macron could wind up in an unhappy place — what researchers described to us as a populism-bond market “doom loop.”
Voters vs. investors
France is not the only country facing a debt trap. As borrowing has grown in many wealthy nations, including France, Britain and the United States, populist politics are surging. The combination makes for a combustible mix.
Market turmoil and political tumult can feed off each other, according to Michal Brzozowski and Joanna Siwinska-Gorzelak, researchers at the University of Warsaw in Poland, who published a paper on the relationship between populism and fiscal policy.
At the root of the problem is a considerable tension: Amid deep political and fiscal uncertainty, voters and investors appear to want different things.
Buyers of debt want to be adequately compensated for the risk of lending to governments. When they see governments unable to make difficult choices, such as cutting spending or increasing taxes, to reduce yawning budget deficits, what they see is a loan that’s getting riskier. As a result, they demand higher interest payments.
Voters, though, are increasingly turning to populist parties that largely reject the idea that budgets require these difficult choices. Instead, they promise to protect generous retirement programs and other spending, while often proposing to cut taxes, or to raise taxes only on the wealthy, which in most cases wouldn’t go far enough.
The resulting tensions could spiral like this: Economically anxious voters turn to populists, who promise a pain-free return to better days, and buyers of government debt recoil.
Catch-22
Some centrist politicians today are still pledging fiscal discipline — the kind of pledges that voters once rewarded. But today, such policies tend to leave the public with the impression that those politicians are largely powerless to improve conditions, said Ludovic Subran, the chief investment officer and chief economist at Allianz, the German insurance company.
 |
| President Emmanuel Macron at a meeting in Qatar yesterday. Benoit Tessier/Reuters |
“That’s really the Catch-22 of politics today,” Subran said. The politicians who have felt the disciplinary hand of the market are punished politically, while more populist parties “say whatever they want to say.”
Eventually these problems will come to a head, said Simon Radford, the director for policy and programming for the Milken Institute in Europe.
“If you’re not going to solve it with new growth, and if interest payments are outrunning growth, then eventually what can’t go on forever, won’t go on forever,” he said. Too much borrowing and too little economic growth will eventually become unsustainable, regardless of who’s in power and what they say while they’re campaigning.
Though Marine Le Pen, the far-right front-runner in France’s presidential election, has vowed to reduce the deficit, economists question the credibility of her financial plan, which would lower the retirement age while slashing spending on state bodies and cutting the country’s contribution to the European Union. All those measures would be difficult to enact. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France’s far-left candidate, has alarmed investors by proposing to effectively cancel some of the country’s debt instead of repaying it.
At this point, it’s looking increasingly possible that these two candidates could be facing off against one another in next year’s presidential elections. Investors are already grimacing.
| MORE TOP NEWS |
 |
| Click to watch. The New York Times |
What Putin gains from releasing an American
Russia yesterday released a 74-year-old American teacher, Stephen James Hubbard, who had been held for four years after being convicted of being a Ukrainian mercenary. President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, praised President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” for the move, which was not part of a prisoner swap.
Why did Putin agree to Hubbard’s release? He probably concluded it would be strategically favorable to him to make this gesture to Trump at a time when he is “winning the American president to Russia’s side,” David Sanger, our White House and national security correspondent, said. Watch him explain in the video above.
| OTHER NEWS |
| Trump’s approval rating hit a new low less than two weeks before the midterm elections. Elon Musk said that SpaceX and Tesla were exploring a merger to create a single company worth more than $3 trillion.A U.S. judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for deceiving Facebook users about its data privacy practices. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations. The Israeli military detained Brad Lander, a Democratic House nominee in New York City, during a volunteering trip in the West Bank. Pope Leo XIV will need no further treatment after his surgery for lung cancer, his doctors said Wednesday. Australian politicians, especially women, said they felt threatened in a polarized atmosphere, after the lawmaker Helen Haines was hit by a car in what the police called a “targeted attack.” China is proposing rules that could give its government new powers to track, and potentially limit, where its A.I. systems are used. The Tata Group, India’s biggest company, is 158 years old and employs over a million people. Now the founding family is fighting its celebrated chairman for control. Indonesians protest what they see as their government’s failure to stop forest fires that have blanketed the country in a sickening haze. Pakistan and Afghanistan appear to have abandoned diplomacy, eight months after Pakistan declared an “open war.” Proxy groups are playing a growing role in the fighting. Ten public housing towers collapsed within seconds during earthquakes in Venezuela in June. A Times investigation found fundamental flaws in their design and construction. Our reporter Julie Turkewitz explains in the video below. |
 |
| Click to watch. The New York Times |
WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING
| A shark that became a celebrity in South Korea returned to the open ocean after being trapped in a canal for more than a month. |
TOP OF THE WORLD
The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about the search for the perfect dog.
| ATHLETIC FEAT OF THE DAY |
 |
| Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times |
Swimming the length of California
Catherine Breed, an endurance athlete, became the first person ever to swim the entire California coastline. The journey took over 100 days and covered more than 1,000 kilometers as Breed braved storms, unpredictable currents and the fastest sharks in the ocean.
| MORNING READ |
 |
Videos made with A.I. are flooding Brazil’s internet ahead of a high-stakes presidential runoff on Sunday. The deluge is testing the country’s capacity to preserve the integrity of its elections.
Brazil bars candidates from using “deepfakes” while campaigning. It also requires campaigns to label videos generated by A.I. In practice, though, curbing the spread of A.I. falsehoods has been difficult. A.I. has emerged as a potent tool for spreading political misinformation — and even just for plain amusement. Take a look.
| AROUND THE WORLD |
 |
| Kyoko Hamada for The New York Times |
Raw liver and roadkill for dinner
Dark nutrition isn’t a specific diet; it’s a way of thinking about food and health. It stems from a central principle: Most of what you think you know about food is wrong. What if broccoli is toxic? What if red meat and butter are actually healthy? What if roadkill is good for you?
A typical dark-nutrition meal might consist of raw beef liver, raw egg yolks and bee pollen. “People think my diet is extreme,” said one proponent. “But they’re eating processed food and drinking alcohol and basically poisoning themselves.”
See if you can guess which of the following foods are NOT part of the dark nutrition diet.
| RECOMMENDATIONS |
Watch: Making her Broadway debut, Julia Louis-Dreyfus discussed the reality of fame.
Read: K-Ming Chang’s “Needlemouth” tells the story of three cousins grappling with their inherited trauma.
Elevate: These simple tweaks can make your red sauce even more shirt-splatteringly delicious.
Explore: Here’s a perfume lover’s guide to Florence, the birthplace of modern fragrance.
| RECIPE |
 |
| David Malosh for The New York Times |
Simple yet surprising, this pantry risotto is a study in contrasts: Luscious, creamy risotto is topped with caramelized carrots that are roasted with spicy chile crisp.
