10-27-26: America Wins the “World Cup” (and Super Bowl) of Economic Growth

by Gary Alexander

October 27, 2026

On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints played an NFL mid-season game in the suburbs of Paris, France. The hapless Saints lost again, but I’m glad that American football match ended somewhat more peacefully than Europe’s own football Super Bowl match last May 30, when Paris St. Germain – France’s top soccer squad – beat Britain’s Arsenal to win the EUFA Champions League. Soon after that game ended (in Budapest), rioters set fires all around Paris, with one death and over 400 injured.

In the last five weeks, similar riots and fires spread throughout France, as rioters ransacked shops in Marseille and set fire to the historic Limoges town hall, which survived the Nazis but not today’s rioters.

French protestors, dominated by their impoverished and un-assimilated immigrants, are mostly demanding more social services and better schools, but France already has the highest level of public spending and tax burdens in the Euro-zone. In 2025, French government spending accounted for 57.3% of GDP, but that’s apparently not enough for the rioting crowds in the Banlieue of Paris and other major French cities. (Note: French suburbs are called “Banlieue,” but since the 1970s the term has taken on an added meaning, usually referring to economically disadvantaged suburbs with un-assimilated immigrant concentrations).

With French elections coming next April, conservative candidate Marine Le Pen has gained favor, while the furthest-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has doubled down on demanding more handouts. Mr. Melenchon is currently in a tie with two other candidates on the left. These three may join forces to try to defeat the likely victory of Ms. Le Pen of the National Rally right – or there may be a run-off next May.

France isn’t the only EU nation facing this funding dilemma. The economic performance of most EU nations has been dismal since 2010, starting with the financial crisis in the PIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). Since about 2008, Europe has seen virtually zero economic or productivity growth.

Marine Le Pen is openly hostile to the EU hierarchy, especially after an EU court convicted her on what seem like a bogus (politically motivated) charge. Next door to France, Germany’s Afd Party is even more openly hostile to the EU, so it is likely that the two largest countries in the EU, Germany and France, will soon be led by anti-EU parties, leading me to suspect the euro will keep dropping to the dollar.

Some recent articles from Bloomberg brought the cause of this dilemma into a sharper focus:

• First, The Wall Street Journal covered France’s appetite for “Magic Money” (i.e., more services despite a lower tax base), based on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which has armed a debt bomb.

• MarketWatch amplified this point in an article entitled: “French bonds are suffering through their worst decade since 1803 – and investors are bracing for more pain.” One telling clue in the article: In 2008, France’s debt-to-GDP ratio was about the same as Germany’s and well below Italy’s ratio, but now French debt is far above Germany’s debt and is closing in on Italy’s high debt-to-GDP ratio.

• Bloomberg posted a similar article, entitled: “France Turmoil Threatens to Drag ECB Into Bond Market Showdown,” exploring the prospect of a government collapse and how the European Central Bank (ECB) may have to step in to buy French bonds or even cancel some debt. This threat sent French bond yields soaring. As a result, the euro appears to be headed to parity with the U.S. dollar.

Addressing the beef that the French need better schools, they have a point, but The Business Standard reports that French educators’ pensions “account for 32% of French education ministry spending.”

France’s public debt has surged to 120% of GDP, with the 2026 deficit projected to reach 5.4% of GDP, almost twice the EU’s 3% limit. And France is not alone. Spain has also seen riots, and Spain’s retail sales dropped 0.9% in the same month Germany saw a 3.4% plunge in retail sales. Also, German efficiency is flagging as their trains no longer run on time. Similar national failures are spreading throughout Europe.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is Running Laps Around the European Union

Try as they might, the European Union cannot emulate the United States. We speak one language, with the world’s longest-standing Constitution. Our states “grew up together,” with one brutal Civil War over 160-years ago, but European nations speak different languages, had different currencies until 1999 and fought endless wars against each other over the last 500-years, with one “100-Year War” lasting 116-years.

Europe mostly matched U.S. growth and market profits from 1989 to 2009, but then the U.S. pulled ahead rapidly, as Europe entered a death spiral and the U.S. economy took off, as charted below:

Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.

Turning to the stock market, there are now 15-companies with market capitalization over $1 trillion, and 12 of them are domiciled in the United States, with two headquartered in the Asian nations near China, and the other being the Saudi state oil monopoly. Zero in Europe! As a result, U.S. markets have blossomed in the last 15-years, while Europe shrank dramatically in its wealth creation capacity.

Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.

With so many mega-stocks created and domiciled in America – or in the technology exporting firms in Taiwan and South Korea – the fruits of capitalism are dominated by American entrepreneurs, not socialist nations in Europe, so let me introduce you to the books and films of Rainer Zitelmann, in his studies of nations.

Dr. Zitelmann travels the world and polls citizens about their attitudes toward free markets or capitalism. Some of his results are in these films, which I have reviewed for Anthem (Freedom Fest) film festival.

• Vietnam – Beating Poverty with Market Economy by Dr. Rainer Zitelmann
• Rainer Zitelmann film about Poland
• Rainer Zitelmann film about Sweden

These are all available on YouTube and run an average 30 to 35-minutes each, so take a short world tour of these amazing political and economic reforms in formerly socialist nations – two of them in Europe!

Or, if you prefer getting information in print (which I prefer), here are Dr. Zitelmann’s latest offerings:

Finally, let’s bring this talk of economic Super Bowls and World Cups home to our 50 United States:

With U.S. elections coming next Tuesday, we’re seeing a microcosm of the warring economic theories of Europe, with some of our 50-states wanting to emulate Europe. For instance, California is threatening to tax wealth, not just income, but taxing the market-based price of one’s assets can only send those asset prices down for everyone – as those assets must be sold to pay the wealth tax. But thankfully, America is a competing laboratory of economic competition, and our healthiest states are business-friendly states.

We also vote with our feet, with a massive emigration from California to more tax-friendly states, so the economic and demographic economic “playoffs” continue. We’ll see the results of this competition next Tuesday. I won’t predict the outcome other than to say most of the established polls will be wildly wrong, and we can celebrate some form of split powers (Democrats controlling the House) as the market loves gridlock, the division of powers inherent in our Constitution, since it limits the political mischief there.