This article examines mounting public-debt concerns across G20 economies, highlighting France’s exceptionally high debt sentiment amid rising borrowing costs, political resistance and budget pressures. Using Permutable’s Global Macro Sentiment Indices, it compares fiscal risks and policy responses internationally. It is aimed at investors, financial analysts, economists, policymakers and institutions monitoring sovereign debt, international bond markets and wider global macroeconomic developments.

France’s public-debt sentiment has reached its most extreme level in a decade. Permutable’s Global Macro Sentiment Indices (GMSI) measure sentiment towards each country’s public finances against its own average over the previous year, with higher readings signalling mounting concern over debt, deficits and borrowing costs. On 9 October France’s reading rose to 6.1 standard deviations (σ) above that average, beyond the peaks reached during the June 2024 snap election and the September 2025 government crisis. At +5.6σ on 12 October, it stands well clear of Italy (+2.1σ) and Britain (+1.0σ), the next highest readings in the G20.

France is the most acute case of a wider pattern. Long-term borrowing costs have risen across the largest economies this autumn: 30-year gilt yields have moved above 6% for the first time since 1998, Japan’s 30-year yield has set a record, and the US Treasury has paid its highest yield at a 10-year auction since 2000. Public-debt sentiment has not followed evenly. It has intensified where higher financing costs meet fiscal plans facing political resistance, and eased where governments have acted to reduce their borrowing or earlier episodes have run their course. Eleven of the 20 economies in the ranking sit above their norm, with South Korea at the bottom.

Image above: France leads G20 public-debt concerns in October 2026, with sentiment at +5.61σ above its historical norm, far exceeding Italy (+2.13σ) and the UK (+1.04σ). Source: Permutable Global Macro Sentiment Indices.

France: squeezed between the bond market and the street

Concern about France’s public finances has built through a series of fiscal setbacks, each reinforcing the last. It rose sharply in mid-September on reports that public debt was heading for a record, and the most intense single day came on 29 September, when official figures confirmed debt at 119.0% of GDP. The 2027 budget, presented two days later, aims to cut the deficit to 5.0% of GDP from a revised 5.4% this year. It arrived as 10-year borrowing costs approached 5%, and the state’s debt-service bill is projected to rise from €62.6bn this year to €72.9bn in 2027. Rising interest payments will absorb part of the planned savings, so the government must save more elsewhere to deliver the same fall in the deficit.

The week to 5 October, which spanned the debt figures and the budget, was the most intense for French public-debt sentiment since the series began in 2015. Doubts over delivery have since deepened. On 7 October the National Assembly’s finance committee struck out a proposal to cap pensioners’ 10% tax allowance, one of the budget’s savings measures. Public-sector unions have called a strike and demonstrations for 13 October. Sentiment towards France was still running at several times its usual intensity in the second week of October.

The 2024 and 2025 episodes each subsided within about a month, once the political shock had passed. This one has a more durable driver. Financing costs do not reset when a government survives a vote, and each concession made without offsetting savings adds to a deficit that is already more expensive to finance. Sentiment is therefore likely to stay elevated for as long as the budget remains before parliament.

Image above: France’s public-debt sentiment reached a decade-high +6.1σ in October 2026, surpassing previous peaks in June 2024 and September 2025. Weekly debt concerns also surged to exceptional levels. Source: Permutable Global Macro Sentiment Indices.

Britain and Japan: higher yields, a measured response

Britain has faced the same rise in long-term borrowing costs, though its public-debt sentiment has responded more moderately. Sentiment intensified through September as gilt yields climbed, reaching almost +2σ at the end of the month, and public borrowing in the financial year to August ran £8.1bn above the official forecast. Yields have remained elevated since, but the daily flow of sentiment has returned to normal, easing Britain’s reading to +1.0σ ahead of the Budget on 28 October.

Japan shows that higher yields need not, by themselves, intensify concern about public debt. Its 30-year yield reached a record on 5 October, the day the prime minister pledged to keep bond issuance under control. Public-debt sentiment, which ran at about twice its usual pace in August, has been slightly below normal so far in October, leaving Japan at −0.6σ.

Italy and Brazil: politics against restraint

In Italy and Brazil, political choices are adding to the pressure. Italy’s public-debt sentiment has climbed over the past month. Official figures confirmed the 2025 deficit at 3.1% of GDP, ending hopes of leaving the EU’s excessive-deficit procedure this year. The government now expects the deficit to fall to 2.9% in 2026 before widening to 3.4% in 2027, as it uses the EU’s national escape clause to fund defence and offset higher energy costs. When the central bank warned on 12 October that deficits above 3% in 2027 and 2028 could delay Italy’s exit from the procedure, sentiment rose to its highest level since May.

Brazil’s public-debt sentiment rose by 2.7σ over the month, the largest increase after France’s, as gross debt climbed to 82.9% of GDP in August, its highest in five years. In the run-up to the election, the government also announced a plan to buy delinquent consumer debt from banks, a measure funded from the public purse.

Where concern has receded

South Korea shows how a credible policy response can turn sentiment. Faced with rising yields, the government used a windfall in chip-related tax revenue to cut planned October bond issuance by about ₩5tn on 1 October, expanded its bond buybacks and signalled further cuts. Public-debt sentiment in the days around the announcement shifted further towards relief than at any point in the past two years. That shift alone moved Korea from above its norm to the bottom of the ranking, at −0.8σ. Whether the improvement lasts depends on revenue: the budget’s projected fall in the debt ratio to 48.3% of GDP in 2027 assumes that receipts continue to outpace borrowing.

In the United States, the largest fall in the ranking reflects the passing of an earlier episode. US public-debt sentiment ran at more than four times its usual pace in August, and the country’s reading has fallen from +3.9σ a month ago to its norm. Sentiment in October has been close to normal, even as the deficit for the 2026 fiscal year was estimated at about $2tn, more than $200bn wider than a year earlier. Investors are still absorbing the supply, though at a price: the 10-year auction on 7 October drew strong demand at the highest yield since 2000.

Image above: Public-debt sentiment trends across 20 G20 economies from June to October 2026 show France’s sharp rise to +5.61σ, while US debt concerns return to normal following an August peak. Source: Permutable Global Macro Sentiment Indices.

Higher long-term borrowing costs are now common to most of the largest economies. Public-debt sentiment has intensified most where fiscal plans are loosening or meeting political resistance, as in Italy and France, and eased where a government has shown it can reduce what it needs to borrow, as in South Korea. France’s budget, now before parliament and facing protest on the street, will be the clearest test of that pattern in the weeks ahead.

How to read the ranking

Each country’s score is its 30-day sum of daily directional public-debt sentiment, compared with its own previous 365 days using only data available at the time and expressed in standard deviations (σ). A positive score means sentiment points to rising debt, wider deficits or costlier borrowing. Sentiment runs from 2015 to 12 October 2026, the last complete day. The monthly change compares today’s score with the score 30 days earlier. Spain is included as the G20’s permanent guest; the European Union is not a GMSI country. Source: Permutable GMSI (COMBINED, directional, sentiment_sum, daily).

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France’s debt alarm hits a decade high and drowns out the rest of the G20