MONETABRIEF – Street protests in France which included students, have turned into riots with torched buildings and looting, recalling the Aragalaya in Sri Lanka after the worst currency collapse engineered by the central bank in its history.

The French protests are coming amid high inflation generated for years by macro-economists who have operated abundant reserve regimes (a single policy rate, created with excess liquidity).

The International Monetary Fund gave technical assistance to Sri Lanka to operate a single policy rate, despite having a central bank which had to monetize the balance of payments to collect serves (pegging).

The protest are among the worst since 1968.

The 1960s saw severe corruption of economics with Anglophone economists (MITs Samuelson in particular) promoting stimulus on the doctrine that there was a trade-off between inflation and employment.

Though monetary knowledge in the French speaking nation was greater, it also got hit as the US Fed lit a fuse under the Bretton Woods system.

In May 1968 France erupted in protests triggered by students at Nanterre University which evolved into a general strike involving leftists.

President De Gaulle left for a military base in Germany and wage hikes were negotiated. Inflation in France was 4.54 in 1968 and topped 6 percent the next year.

France re-imposed exchange controls in May 31.

As the US continued to print money misled by macro-economists, disregarding the gold peg at 35 dollars, prices came under pressure.

The London Gold Pool collapsed and in March gold hit 45 dollar before easing, while macro-economists kept the 'official' gold price at 35 dollar in a futile action, until the Bretton Woods collapsed two years later and gold soared higher.

Under the abundant reserve regimes in the Fed and ECB (now headed by Christine Largarde who was at one time in IMF), gold is now 4000 dollars an ounce.

Macro-economists in Sri Lanka after cutting rates to close an output gap (the IMF gave technical assistance to the central bank to calculate potential output, giving incentives to the trigger-happy note-issue bank print money to 'close' the gap).

In Sri Lanka in 2026, there has been a resurgence of nationalism with some monks coming to the streets on behalf of a monk convicted of contempt of court and some protestors holding lion flag sans the coloured lines signifying minorities.

Europe has since a resurgence of nationalism under the high inflation of the ECB coming from the abundant reserve regime.

In Sweden however – inflation is low and has been for some time – the nationalists lost ground in an election in September. (Colombo/Oct18/2026)