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Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

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Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#111

Post by seszett »

Epa095 wrote: post #75
seszett wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe. 3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.

It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead). 1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

It's not clear to me either, but as I understand it it doesn't include pensions because social contributions are not part of "disposable income".

I think that "the net adjustment for change in pension entitlements" is there to take into account the expected reduced future income from pension entitlements dwindling over time (edit: in effect, making pensions count as negative savings) somehow, but it's unclear.

I looked for another perspective but the French national bank doesn't mention pensions in its explanations[0].

[0] https://www.banque-france.fr/system/files/2024-08/epargne-de...

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#112

Post by mrtksn »

sgloutnikov wrote: post #109
mrtksn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the poorest EU countries are actually surprisingly wealthy. Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarian deposits reached 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate…

Those numbers are quite off. The total amount of Leva in circulation at the end of 2024 was round 30B. End of November 2025 in circulation around 23B.

Here’s a source: https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zon...

By the mid January %58 of the leva were removed from circulation BTW.

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#113

Post by [deleted] »

f1shy wrote: post #25
abirch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the US Dollar is devaluing. In the past year the dollar went down by 11%. That means SP 500 which has gone up 13% in the past year has only gone up 2% for a European.

The fact that the EUR/U$S parity did not change much means EUR devaluated about the same, doesn’t it?

[deleted]

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#114

Post by ptero »

dmix wrote: post #58
ilikehurdles wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to the implication, the Swedish fund that possibly sold $8b of its $100b worth of US Treasuries did not cite politics as its reason for doing so, and no part of the article backs up that claim. Additionally, selling out of the US dollar as the fed aimed to cut rates and as the dollar declined from historic highs against the Euro seems sensible regardless of politics. Denmark has been exiting foreign bonds fo…

To be fair, the Swedish pension fund specifically cited the US's "large budget deficits and growing government debt" for why they saw it as higher risk. That sort of thing is 100% politicians. https://www.thestandard.com.hk/wealth-and-investment/article...

The cited rationale is a perfectly reasonable take.

But most of the world is in the same boat of "large budget deficits and growing government debt". It will be "interesting" for bond issuers and most investors and "exciting fishing" for hedge fund sharks over the next 10 years or so.

That said, I do not agree that it is 100% politicians. At least in the US, that path has been virtually unavoidable after the fiscal spending by G.W. Bush on the 9/11 wars and fully set in stone after 2008 subprime crisis. For the last 15+ years politicians could slow down or speed up the transit a little, but getting off that train has not been an option. My 2c.

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#115

Post by paganel »

direwolf20 wrote: post #70
paganel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of agriculture and us here in Europe losing our food-related resilience because of that. The tertiary sector won't save you in case of a continental blockade and the Argentinian/Brazilian grain suddenly becoming unavailable. "We'll go back to our farmers here in Europe!" Oops, you've just pushed them into bankruptcy a few years ago as a result of Mercosur, so good luck with that.

What happens to bankrupt farms? Are they converted into national forests?

Probably real estate. You also lose the tools, and the people, and the know-how.

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#116

Post by samiv »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #62
jochem9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US people take on personal debt for something like a car. In the Netherlands (where I live) this is very uncommon: people save up, then buy it.

Our public transportation infrastructure is so badly managed that many jobs will ask you if you have reliable transportation and fire you if you find yourself without it. If your car breaks here it's often not really a option to save up for a bit first.

Part of "freedom", yes?

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#117

Post by downrightmike »

nradov wrote: post #5

Macron is making up numbers. Unless the EU member states actually impose capital controls, investors will continue to send their capital wherever it can earn the highest returns. Profitable investment opportunities in the EU remain slim and so far they seem uninterested in pursuing a growth policy.

Similar thing to what the UK did post-Brexit?

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#118

Post by paganel »

f1shy wrote: post #99
paganel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of agriculture and us here in Europe losing our food-related resilience because of that. The tertiary sector won't save you in case of a continental blockade and the Argentinian/Brazilian grain suddenly becoming unavailable. "We'll go back to our farmers here in Europe!" Oops, you've just pushed them into bankruptcy a few years ago as a result of Mercosur, so good luck with that.

The amount of erosion and heavy use of fertilizer doesn’t seem so good in the long run.

Are you talking about Argentina or France?

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#119

Post by alephnerd »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #90
baxtr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like how…?

By taking inspiration from the US. The US has PFIC for instance and many other reporting requirements that make it more attractive to invest in the US than abroad.

Yea, but how?

The EU can barely get the Mercosur FTA out the door. How can it even attempt to make such a drastic change that would make FDI in the EU less attractive than equally large and equally onerous China?

And that ignores the fact that states like Poland, Ireland, and Czechia would ferociously fight back at anything that threatens their FDI driven economies.

Even Ireland opposed the Anti-Coercion Instrument [0] four days ago, and everyone still remembers Belgium's unilateral opposition to seizing frozen Russian assets barely a month ago.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/be-no-doubt-eu-will-ret...

Re: Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU

#120

Post by sgloutnikov »

mrtksn wrote: post #112
sgloutnikov wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers are quite off. The total amount of Leva in circulation at the end of 2024 was round 30B. End of November 2025 in circulation around 23B.

Here’s a source: https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zon... By the mid January %58 of the leva were removed from circulation BTW.

Total deposits in the bank accounts sure. I understood it as they deposited 100B of their cash into their bank accounts by November.
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