Where the math is defensible.
Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
Colombia 2026: Petro fiscal arithmetic and the post Bogota electoral year
Gustavo Petro enters his final budget cycle with a 57 percent debt path, a fragile fiscal rule, and an Ecopetrol production curve that no longer finances his social spending agenda. The 2026 municipal cycle and a recomposed Senate decide whether the cambio coalition holds.
Colombia under President Gustavo Petro reaches 2026 with the fiscal arithmetic critics warned about in 2022. Central government debt sits near 57 percent of GDP per Ministerio de Hacienda fiscal year 2024 figures, the Comite Autonomo de la Regla Fiscal (CARF) has issued repeated unfavorable opinions on the medium-term framework, and Ecope...
France 2026: The Fiscal Trilemma Tightens
Bayrou's Loi de Finances 2026 has to land a 4.6 percent deficit while financing rearmament, a contested pension implementation, and the EPR2 build, with three rating agencies already at AA minus or worse.
France entered 2026 with the second largest fiscal deficit in the euro area, 5.8 percent of GDP in 2024 per INSEE national accounts, against a corrective path agreed with the European Commission under the reactivated Excessive Deficit Procedure that requires 5.4 percent in 2025 and 4.6 percent in 2026. Loi de Finances 2026 cleared the Nat...
Israel 2026: The Fiscal-Political Reset After Gaza, Lebanon, and the Iran Strikes
The Bank of Israel pegs cumulative direct war costs near 250 billion shekels, the deficit ran at 6.9 percent of GDP in 2024, and three rating agencies have downgraded Israeli sovereign credit. The 2026 question is whether the macro stabilization holds while reconstruction, settlement spending, and the legal cases at The Hague run in parallel.
Israel ended its multi-front war cycle with a January 2025 Gaza ceasefire and a November 2024 Lebanon ceasefire, after roughly fifteen months of combat that mobilized 360,000 reservists at peak, drove GDP down 19.4 percent annualized in the fourth quarter of 2023, and forced the central government deficit to 6.9 percent of GDP in 2024. Th...
Sri Lanka After Restructuring: The Post Default Trajectory in 2026
Eighteen months after the ISB exchange and fourteen months into the Dissanayake government, the IMF program is delivering reserves and disinflation, but the medium term debt arithmetic still depends on tourism, tax effort, and a credible parastatal restructuring.
Sri Lanka is the closest case to a completed sovereign restructuring on the post pandemic frontier. The April 2022 default has been resolved through a 48 month IMF Extended Fund Facility approved in March 2023, a Domestic Debt Optimisation completed in September 2023, an Official Creditor Committee deal with Paris Club plus India and Hung...