The Political Work of Creditworthiness: containment of the Covid Debt and Restoration of the Public Narrative Order

We analyze the political and institutional design of Covid debt treatment. During the pandemic, the importance of sovereign creditworthiness, whatever the macroeconomic and financial context, is reasserted. We show that the debt amortization mechanism (containment, cantonnement in French) – retained in a minimal version – responds to the objective of restoring order to the public debate: organizing credibility and confidence in the debt, evacuating the alternatives in order to maintain the advantage of the cultural battle over public finances (blaming excessive spending and social mismanagement as culprits) and preparing the return to « normal » of the separation between the monetary and fiscal domains. Metaphorically speaking, amortizing (and containing) the debt makes it possible to contain the overflow of public finance ratios, but also to stem the swarming of innovations (monetary, financial, fiscal) that were heard loudly in the public arena during the successive confinements. We show that « everything fits together » when it comes to sovereign creditworthiness: the material reality of investors and the financial community confidence (objectified by the risk premiums required at the time of lending) does not evolve independently of the political narratives that circulate in the public arena.