Monday 18 June 2012

Eurogeddon goes on - grexit postponed?

Europe's never-ending supply of tin cans
Probably the worst result possible in the Greek election. A narrow and unconvincing win by the pro-bailout parties - with the crazies like Syriza and New Dawn Nazi's getting ever more percentages of the vote.

Perhaps they will get a Government that agrees to follow the austerity route, but the dynamic of the Greece economic collapse means that bail-out is just going to be followed by needs for another bailout. An 10 year internal devaluation is not a plausible or realistic scenario.

What we have got is another decent effort at can kicking - lustfully jumped on by all the Euro elites as some kind of salvation. However, Spain is not sorted, nor Portugal, nor Italy  - so none of the PIGS then. They have been PIGS for a long-time.

Of course, there is still a chance that the a Government can't be formed and we go around the houses again and have new elections, so the whole dispiriting enigma can continue for a few more weeks and months at least.

Now to the G20 and let's see what non-event communique they can come up with later tonight and tomorrow...

8 comments:

hovis said...

Amsuing to see that you say Syrzia are crazy then agree with the analysis that Greek society wont take another 10/20 years or austerity.

They may be wrong on many things, but their grasp on realpolitik of situation has been pretty good so far imho.

As for Golden Dawn, perfectly predictable they gain support given the situation of collapse and location of Greece's porous borders. It is easy to forget that whilst in Europe the Eastern Med is a very different place to Northern Europe.

Bill Quango MP said...

Not surprised that the Greeks baulked at expulsion from the Euro.
More surprising is how small the winning margin for conservative comfort and continuing semi-order was.

Still...another healthy kick of the can.

Timbo614 said...

Can kicked again, yes. but it seems to me that the market knows the can is getting heavier and heavier, the last bit of Euro-bank-greece-phoria at least lasted until the afternoon! The market stated sinking again around 10 am this time around!

Postal voter said...

How can they claim that 29% gives them a mandate? What about the other 71%?

asquith said...

Golden Dawn lost seats though, and I'd be willing to bet that their "rise" stops here. In fact, this only confirms the advance of anti-austerity forces that has begun and is continuing in France, with SYRIZA gaining support but narrowly losing and thus remaining "pure" in opposition. Now the Eoin Clarke/Owen Jones tendency can slag off the government to their hearts' content, and as the biggest opposition movement will gain support from every other opposition.

The former two-party system is as meaningless as the PdL/PD system in Italy has been rendered, it's now the case that SYRIZA can call themselves the anti-government, and that leaves them the biggest winners today. Even if Golden Dawn hadn't alienated people by kicking off last week, their "success" would mean as little as the BNP's never to be repeated "achievement" of getting 2 MEPs elected.

asquith said...

I'll tell you what is difficult to make sense of, this Egyptian election. Still got no idea what we're supposed to make of that.

Anonymous said...

Interesting to note how 'conservative' is being used in this context, in favor of the status quo, in other words, 'conservative' = 'International socialist'.

hovis said...

CU: Partially agree - the whole stay in the euro thing is to (my) eurosceptic eyes untenable.

That said the EU will move heaven and earth to try and keep the status quo going for the while. Therefore calling Germany's bluff does have a certain realpolitik logic. And the kick back against the non-working fantasy is having apolitical effect. If things cannot be maintained they wont be.

Greece is broken literally so pretending that another 20 years of austerity will actually fix things is as if not more insane that expecting the Germans to cough up. It just happens the austerity idea is the concensus (and the one being implemented) so its insanity is not questioned.

I know they are communists, not as stalinist as the KKE, a slightly different flavour.

Even so they are not part of the revoltingly political corrupt elite (ND/PASOK) who voted themselves immunity from prosecution for past bribe taking and corruption. Therefore because of the likely outcome they are the least worst option.