Gold Research

Rising Interest Rates, Hedge Funds: Warning on French Debt

The yield on the 30-year French government bond exceeded 4.7% on July 16, breaking a record that had stood since mid-October 2008 — at the height of the subprime crisis, one month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. On July 22, the 10-year bond reached 4.06%, a level not seen since the end of the Great Financial Crisis. We are certainly facing a new crisis, with the resumption of war in Iran and soaring oil prices, but the situation remains incomparable to the panic that reigned after the collapse of the major U.S. investment bank. At the time, markets feared a domino effect and a wave of bank failures comparable to that of the 1929 crisis. Nevertheless, this is enough to put significant pressure on long-term interest rates: “UK 30y yields have climbed to 5.73%, US yields to 5.14%, Japa