Understand how inflation, rates and central banks bend the real economy. No quarterly « regime change », no dated forecasts. Just the frame to read a headline without panicking — and to know which numbers actually matter.
The backbone of the French system, explained simply: pay-as-you-go, the mandatory tiers, the real meaning of the “42 schemes” figure, and what the 2023 reform — then its 2026 suspension — actually change.
The backbone of the French system, explained simply: pay-as-you-go, the mandatory tiers, the real meaning of the “42 schemes” figure, and what the 2023 reform — then its 2026 suspension — actually change.
The railway workers' scheme without the trial or the whitewash: its history, its calculation on the last six months, its retirement ages — and why the State pays roughly €3.2bn a year to balance it.
Often confused with SNCF's, the electricity and gas workers' scheme differs on one decisive point: it receives no State subsidy. How it's really funded (yes, the CTA levy on your bill), and the funded layer — the PERO — sitting on top.
The most media-covered scheme is also the best textbook case: its rules, its State subsidy, and above all what “closing a scheme” means over fifty years — a slow wind-down, not an immediate saving.
Born in 1673 under Colbert, the seafarers' scheme is the doyen of French pensions — still open, more than 80% funded by the State, and built on a unique logic: you contribute not on your wage, but on a flat-rate scale by category.
Behind the big schemes hides a gallery of tiny ones: Opera ballet dancers retiring at 42, the Comédie-Française, the Banque de France, notaries' clerks. Minuscule in headcount, they reveal the often-forgotten logic of the 2023 reform.
Final episode: we leave France. United States, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway — how others fund their pensions, what is singular about France, and why the “sovereign fund that pays the pensions” is a myth.
We optimize 0.5% in fees and ignore 3–5% inflation that wipes ten years of effort in a single year. Macro isn't market timing — it's the tide under the boat.
I never publish a dated macro forecast. Not because macro is useless — it's the backdrop to everything — but because quarterly forecasts enrich the journalist making them, not the reader listening to them. I'd rather give you the mechanics that last 30 years than a bet on the next CPI print. A sound strategy doesn't rest on having called the next recession.