I just calculated this number during my diner. I was watching LCI and they announced that half the French workers decided to work on the Journée de Solidarité (day of solidarity) – a former holiday converted back to a normal work day to pay for pensions, etc. and soon to be renamed or cancelled… The Government collected € 2 billions on that day.

Knowing that the Government’s debt is a bit more than €1,000 billions (source: Les Echos), it would then take 250 full days for “us” to repay our debt:

€1000B / (2 * €2B) = 250 days.

I guess it’s no big deal for someone to have a loan equivalent to one year of salary (I owe my bank more than my past salary with my MBA loan). But what about a whole country? I really think France is spending more than it can afford and I hope that the “serious” people claiming that in the media will finally be heard.

Hopefully, Asians will still like to visit France as the Asian economies develop in the coming decades. I’m glad I’m taking a concentration in Marketing – it might soon be the only serious job in France: selling it as an exotic vacation destination (“Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, the wine… and we still have a communist party!”).