David Borovsky retweeted
Slovenskí seniori majú mediánový príjem na úrovni 98 % príjmu mladších ľudí, čo je štvrtý najvyšší pomer v EÚ. V roku 2008 to bolo sotva 80 %. V Denníku N píšem o tom, ako aj Slovensko skĺzlo do „boomerského luxusného komunizmu“. 🧵
David Borovsky retweeted
Every time I think European voters cannot be more in denial about pensions, they prove me wrong: they are even more in denial than in my worst nightmare.
The average French person believes there are 6.4 workers for every retiree. The real number is about 1.8.
David Borovsky retweeted
Since 2022, 72% of the world’s AI compute has ended up in the US and about 10% in China.
And the US share keeps growing. It acquired around 60% of new compute each year from 2022 to 2024, then 72% in 2025, and 78% in the first half of 2026.
This data comes from our interactive AI Chip Imports explorer, which estimates and visualizes national compute shares using customs records.
It’s the latest piece in our project to map the AI chip supply chain, which also provides data on the components used to manufacture chips, sales volumes, the data centers that house chips, and the companies that own and use them.
More on this new data and what we’ve learned below.
ALT Stacked area chart: share of cumulative new AI compute (H100e) by country, 2023 Q3 to 2026 Q2. The US rises to about 72%, China about 10%, followed by the EU, Malaysia, Japan, India and others.
David Borovsky retweeted
Unreformed communist dinosaur is planning the utter destruction of France.
The far-left candidate in next year’s French presidential election Jean-Luc Mélenchon has presented his political platform.
The most important proposals are:
- Lowered retirement age from 64 to 60
- Increased pensions
- Reduced workweek to 32 hours
- National health insurance covering 100% of medical costs
- Increase housing benefits by 10%
- Price control of certain essential products
- €1 meals for students
- Banning nuclear power
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party is the second-largest party in France after Marine Le Pen’s party and he has a chance of advancing from the first round to the second round of the presidential where he would then off with Marine Le Pen.
The winner of the second round becomes President of France.
David Borovsky retweeted
French financing costs have jumped this year with a lot more in the pipeline. More public money on debt servicing means less money for schools, roads, hospitals and other grievances (no change for pensions, those are not voted on). Things will get worse before they get better.
David Borovsky retweeted
Demanding economic growth has become unfashionable among some people in Europe.
Instead they speak of a “cost of living crisis”.
But it’s really one and the same.
Economic growth means that incomes rise relative to prices.
Economic growth means that the things we need become more affordable.
David Borovsky retweeted
La charge est basse parce que l'État a beaucoup emprunté quand les taux étaient proches de zéro, et que ces taux restent acquis jusqu'à l'échéance des titres. C'est la situation d'un ménage qui a emprunté à 1 % en 2021 : sa mensualité ne bouge pas tant qu'il n'a pas à réemprunter.
Sauf que l'État, lui, réemprunte en permanence. Sa dette a une durée de vie moyenne de huit ans et demi, et près de 450 milliards d'OAT à 1 % ou moins arrivent à échéance d'ici 2030.
J'ai prolongé votre courbe en refinançant chaque titre à son échéance aux taux d'aujourd'hui, en reprenant la trajectoire de dette du gouvernement. On dépasserait le record de 1996 (3,6 %) vers 2029-2030, et on approcherait 5 % du PIB en 2035. Même le gouvernement, qui suppose des taux plus bas qu'aujourd'hui, prévoit 2,9 % dès 2027.
Cette courbe ne s'infléchira que si les taux baissent ou si la dette recule. Et on ne les fera pas baisser en expliquant au marché que la charge de la dette n'est pas un problème.
La charge de la dette, qui serait soi-disant inédite, qui nous étranglerait et qui justifierait (pour certains) les pires coupes dans les dépenses de santé et retraites.
Alerte rouge, vraiment ?
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Le graphique montre uniquement l'évolution passée de la charge de la dette en % du PIB, inférieure aux pics des années 1990. Le rapport annexé au PLF 2027 prévoit une hausse à 2,9 % en 2027 et 3,7 % en 2030 en raison du refinancement progressif à des taux plus élevés.
tresor.economie.gouv.fr/Articles/a03a2…
ofce.fr/prev/prev2609/…
fipeco.fr/commentaire/Le…
David Borovsky retweeted
I spent two days touring Intel’s most advanced fab and talking to its technical leadership to understand what the chips of the future will look like.
A lot of what's coming next – gate-all-around transistors, backside power, CFET, hybrid bonding – is hard to follow without actually seeing it, so we made all the awesome animated explainers that I wish I had while I was prepping.
I also asked Intel’s leadership how the semiconductor industry will cope with the enormous shock in demand from AI.
AI compute has grown 3x a year for the last decade, but according to Intel's CTO, Intel could only double leading-edge wafer production with today’s global stock of chipmaking tools.
What kinds of tricks can foundries pull to extend this crossover point where demand surges way ahead of supply?
This was a totally new format for us - hope you enjoy!
0:00:00 – Intro
0:00:47 – How Intel brings up a new process node
0:03:22 – What Intel learned from 10nm
0:06:28 – From planar transistors to gate-all-around
0:13:13 – Why High-NA EUV pays off for Intel but not TSMC
0:19:20 – Could chips have evolved completely differently?
0:23:33 – Inside Intel's "Hot Topics" meeting
0:29:30 – Replacing copper wires with ruthenium
0:32:41 – Why stacked transistors take a decade to ship
0:39:45 – Hybrid bonding and the chip-to-chip bottleneck
0:48:00 – There aren't enough tools to 10x chip production
0:53:14 – Can Intel catch up to TSMC?
1:01:02 – Terafab, and rethinking the fab from scratch
David Borovsky retweeted
“Neoliberal rule” vaporized by…the product of an American company with global supply chains, an immigrant CEO, and immigrant workers.
These people just put words together.
David Borovsky retweeted
The biggest, and stupidest, myth in European politics, particularly popular in France, is that Europe suffers the consequences of "austerity" and "neoliberalism". In the biggest 5 countries in Europe, more than half of the population makes its income from the state, less than half from the private sector. This is what makes the problem of reducing the welfare state so impossible: more than half of the voters are net recipients. No surprise that Italy's budget has not been balanced in 100 years, France's in 50 years (ooh la la, l'austérité!!):
-France: 30 million from the state versus 21m private sector workers. State spending is 57% of GDP, taxes more than half the economy. The budget hasn't been balanced in the lifetime of most French (since 1974).
- Germany: 35 million adults from the state, versus 34 million from the private sector. 10% of the population is registered as severely disabled. Public spending is over half of GDP. Germany has had a continuous budget deficit since 2019.
-Italy: 23 million from the state, versus 20.5 million private-sector workers. Public spending is 51% of GDP. Italy has had a budget deficit every year since 1925, for 100 years.
- Spain more people get their income from the state since 2024: 18.21 million from the public sector versus 17.9 million people working in the private sector. Since 2025, Spain also had more government employees than self-employed workers (autónomos) for the first time in history. State spending is at 45%, budget has not been balanced since 2007.
- UK: 54% of households now receive more in state benefits than they pay in taxes. State spending is 44.5% of GDP, taxes (40%) are at their highest since 1950, the budget hasn't been balanced since 2001, and 1 in 5 new cars is paid by the government through a bizarre state disability scheme (Motability).
David Borovsky retweeted
These NYC apartments are standing empty, not because the owners don't want to rent them, but because rent stabilization laws prohibit them from charging enough to earn back the costs of necessary repairs.
My latest for @WSJFreeEx
David Borovsky retweeted
May come as a bit of a surprise to those of us who were following Paul's writings in the 2010s when he was railing against Eurozone "austerity craziness".
With interest rates at the zero lower bound, he argued that fiscal consolidation in a depressed economy was self-defeating: multipliers were large, so cutting deficits deepened the slump and did little for debt ratios. France was one of his recurring examples. It turns out that French policymakers were listening to him. In every big recession, they massively increased spending. But the multipliers were not as big as advertised. Deficits didn't pay for themselves.
Government debt/GDP is a persistent state variable. Bond yields are not. If the only reason you're changing your mind is because yields are up, then your advice wasn't that good to begin with.
Op-eds and blog posts arguing against French austerity (list generated by Claude)
“Franc Thoughts on Long-Run Fiscal Issues,” blog post (Conscience of a Liberal), August 11, 2011. Argues there are limits to deficits but they are not relevant now.
“Those Revolting Europeans,” NYT column, May 2012. Welcomes Hollande’s election as a rejection of austerity. (Title and date from memory; please verify before citing.)
“The Plot Against France,” NYT column, November 11, 2013 (online November 10). Attacks the S&P downgrade; calls French fiscal prospects “distinctly nonalarming.”
“France by the Numbers,” blog post, January 2014. Mocks French elite pessimism after Hollande’s supply-side turn.
“Scandal in France,” NYT column, January 17, 2014. Calls Hollande’s embrace of austerity and supply-side doctrine scandalous.
“The Fall of France,” NYT column, August 29, 2014 (print, p. A23). Says Hollande folded to austerity demands; France “isn’t Greece” and not fragile.
Related: defenses of the French model, not explicitly about austerity
7. “What’s the Matter With Europe?”, NYT column, May 2017. Argues France is a fairly successful economy that gets bad press from welfare-state critics.
8. Twitter thread, November 5, 2019. Argues France gets bad press not borne out by the facts.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman warned that France’s deteriorating public finances are on an “unsustainble path” and at risk of unleashing a debt crisis across the euro area bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
David Borovsky retweeted
''Latvian woman got six years in prison for donating €42.86 to Russia's military.
While those who send billions in arms to (Kyiv) walk free.''
David Borovsky retweeted
When Krugman thinks you’re running too large a deficit and the bond vigilantes have it right, it might be time to worry.
Paul Krugman, prix Nobel d’économie américain, est de gauche. Favorable à la taxe Zucman, critique du French-bashing fréquent aux États-Unis, il fait régulièrement l’éloge du modèle social européen.
Voici son analyse de la situation française.
« La France se distingue, même parmi les pays en difficulté budgétaire, sur un point essentiel : son incapacité persistante à regarder en face la réalité des retraites. Il n’est pas nécessaire d’être conservateur pour comprendre que les départs précoces à la retraite en France ne sont pas soutenables, surtout quand on sait que l’espérance de vie des Français à 65 ans les conduit en moyenne jusqu’à environ 87 ans, soit deux ans de plus qu’aux États-Unis. Ainsi, les pressions budgétaires engendrées en grande partie par la générosité du système public de retraite français ont entraîné des coupes dans d’autres dépenses, notamment dans l’éducation. La France accorde, de fait, d’importantes subventions aux Français âgés, aux dépens de tous les autres. Deuxième économie de la zone euro, la France est peut-être passée du statut de pays « trop gros pour faire faillite » (too big to fail) à celui de pays « trop gros pour être sauvé » (too big to save). Bref, il est malheureusement trop facile d’imaginer un scénario de crise française particulièrement grave, qui provoquerait de profondes divisions au sein de l’Europe. »
Pourtant, les députés membres de la Commission des finances viennent à une large majorité de rejeter les mesures qui l’auraient réduit, et de valider celles qui ont l’effet contraire.
Ils ont malheureusement sans doute raison de penser que cela rend plus probable leur réélection si l’Assemblée est dissoute au printemps prochain.
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/w…
David Borovsky retweeted
French government spending is 57% of GDP, the state is running a 5.4% deficit, debt to GDP is 119%, the retirement age is 64, pensioners make more money than workers do, the bond market is melting down over such obviously ridiculous fiscal policies, and yet you have violent rioters in the streets demanding an “end to austerity” LMAO
David Borovsky retweeted
Hi My name is Jean-Luc, and I want to be put in charge of selling French sovereign bonds for the next 5 years. How am I doing so far?
Le banquier central français, ancien collaborateur direct de Macron, prend publiquement parti contre son pays à l'étranger en appelant implicitement les spéculateurs à sanctionner la France à cause de mes propositions. C'est un acte de trahison. Il n'y aura pas de prescription en 2027. Il sera poursuivi pour cela. Ras-le-bol de ces soi-disant élites qui crient au drame qu'elles veulent créer pour peser sur le peuple.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
L'entretien d'Emmanuel Moulin au Financial Times ne cite ni Mélenchon ni ses propositions et n'appelle pas les spéculateurs à sanctionner la France. Il alerte sur les risques d'une hausse des taux sans redressement des finances publiques.
lemonde.fr/economie/artic…
lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/de…
David Borovsky retweeted
Cuál es la evidencia empírica sobre el control de alquileres? Basado en 112 estudios, el @ft @jburnmurdoch resume en este gráfico. Cada círculo es un estudio. Rojo negativo, azul positivo:
- Reduce el alquiler de los que ya alquilan un piso.
- Aumenta el alquiler en los edificios cercanos
- Reduce la calidad de la vivienda.
- Reduce el número de viviendas disponibles
- Reduce la construcción de viviendas.
- En resumen, su costo es claramente mayor a su beneficio.
David Borovsky retweeted
Why France, why now? Over the last couple of years, the French political class has been signaling to the bond market that its pensioners/boomers are the de facto senior claimants on the French Treasury's revenue. And that's not what bond investors wanted to hear, especially now that they're being asked to absorb a much larger share of issuance than a couple of years ago.
thetwocents.substack.com/p/l…
David Borovsky retweeted
A CEO told me that while all her IT workers are more productive, her IT department is not. She thought "they were smoking the productivity gain in the corridors" @tylercowen asked me when we would see the leisure dividend of AI and I said it may be already there for some, although I joked for me it has not: my WHOOP age went from 53 to 57 this year.
We discussed many things: Spain and Europe, why AI will not cause mass unemployment, what I learned in politics and why political parties prefer to promote people whose outside option is low. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
conversationswithtyler.com/e…
