A stunning finding of the report is that no one actually knows who holds the French debt. To finance its debt, the French state, like any other state, issues bonds, which are bought by a set of authorised banks. These banks then sell the bonds on the global financial markets. Who owns these titles is one of the world's best kept secrets. The state pays interests to the holders, so technically it could know who owns them. Yet a legally organised ignorance forbids the disclosure of the identity of the bond holders.

This is amazing to me. That debt and money goes through so many channels that it just gets...lost, unless you spend the time untangling everything. At least now I better understand how money laundering works. Has there been a debt audit recently in the United States? I would love to see what that looks like and how the politicians would spin the results of one.

P.S. How was Andrew Bird?