French bond market plunges into turmoil as specter of crisis contagion resurfaces in Europe.

As hundreds of thousands of young French people take part in nationwide protests, violence flares, the bond market plunges, and far-left lawmaker Louis Boyard last week offered his solution to the government's predicament. "You don't understand what young people want at all!" the 26-year-old shouted at Education Minister Edouard Geffray during a heated debate in the National Assembly. "To solve all these problems, you need to put real money on the table." The problem is that France simply cannot afford the 10 billion euros demanded by student protesters. Instead, in recent years, France has spent heavily to respond to multiple crises, and investors are losing confidence in whether the EU's second-largest economy can control its rapidly growing and costly debt burden. Market sell-offs in recent weeks have pushed borrowing costs to levels not seen in nearly 25 years. Last Friday, the spread between French 10-year government bond yields and Italian government bonds hit a record high.