The planet’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater, which manages more than $160 billion, just bet $22 billion on a decline of stocks in the banking sector and other large corporations.

The stock markets are being shaken these days, indexes are in the red, and months of gains have disappeared in a few sessions... Are we witnessing a temporary correction or is this a deeper and lasting crisis? It’s too early to tell, and we’re not going to play the guessing game. However, if we step back a little, we can acknowledge a deeply changing financial landscape, a historical changeover: it has to do with interest rates.

Clearly Europe is fragile – this is where one has to look for risks of price slips, sudden interest rates hikes, overblown balance sheets...

Monetary tapering from the Fed and the ECB, blaringly announced in the media, are thus without any effect; they will not help in emerging from the lethargy of zero or negative rates.

The French like to denounce American capitalism and mock its excesses and instability, especially in the financial sector. Nevertheless, when one looks at the data from the large banks on both sides of the Atlantic, it becomes clear that the most risk is actually with France.

The ECB wants to prevent bank runs by allowing banks to block deposits and authorise limited withdrawals, like they did in Cyprus in March, 2013. According to the institution, the deposit protection scheme is no longer necessary.