FRANCE BURNS DOWN FRANCE

France went out Saturday over the cost of living and the state of its schools. The interior ministry counted about 550,000 marchers, the CGT union claimed 800,000, and most of them did the normal thing and went home. Masked groups in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nice and Strasbourg did not. They popped the metal shutters off storefronts and cleared the shelves, and police have blamed radical far-left groups plus a crowd of opportunists who turned up for free sneakers. CNN reported more than 2,000 arrests over the weekend, with later counts around 2,400. Roughly 1,500 businesses were damaged and losses run into the hundreds of millions of euros. Two people died. A protester in Saint-Etienne lost a hand and the interior minister declined to confirm whether a police grenade caused it. That answer is not calming anybody down. Limoges lost its 143-year-old town hall to a fire. Lyon lost its tourist office, which does simplify the brochure. Macron vowed to hold accountable anyone who "sought to bring down the Republic," officials started floating curfews, and the blame carousel began. Le Pen called the government powerless. Melenchon told PM Sebastien Lecornu he was playing with fire. Lecornu said the far left built the conditions. Nobody dwelled on Tuesday, when the National Assembly votes on the revenue half of a 2027 budget that trims the deficit from 5.4% of GDP to 5%, with French debt at 119% of GDP, the highest since 1946.

Why you should give a shit: The burning town hall gets the views, but Tuesday is the expensive part, because France already pays more to borrow than Greece and a budget that dies in the Assembly costs your index fund more than every smashed storefront in Paris combined.