Uh, it was the left Pasok party in Greece that accepted austerity measures and for that they are headed for defeat, what is happening in France too is the refutation of “just austerity” measures, Don’t you wonder who are the ones proposing more austerity measures these days in the USA?
I kinda doubt François Hollande’s government can manage to completely fuck up the Eurozone economy on their own in the space of five months. But hey, I’m willing to be surprised !
Devil’s advocate: The American voter won’t make that connection if the cause of their anger is their own personal financial hurting.
What about them PLUS the Greek results (which admittedly are a little off-topic in this thread)?
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That was what I was thinking actually. Leftist victories in France and Greece may result in a Republican sweep come November
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One can only marvel at the ability of Americans to turn the results of an election in a major western country into something that affects them directly. Fuck France, this might count for a few percentage points come November.
Don’t French pols and pundits take the same attitude to American election results?
A global economic collapse, by definition, would affect everyone.
Not really, and I’m not talking about pundits. Just posters in a thread supposedly about the French election. Their first thought is how the result might affect Mitt Romney.
There is talk of Sarkozy’s party UMP allying with the National Front for the legislative elections there. Hopefully this will not occur-De Gaulle would turn in his grave to learn that his party is making a deal with the devil with the Bitchyites.
It would, and some worse than others, but if the euro (properly capitalized this time) collapsed, countries would be looking for a safe place to put their money. The US Dollar, for all of our economic issues, is still the dominant reserve currency in the world, and I doubt that the Pound Sterling or the Yen would benefit too much given the endless Japanese recession and the UK’s strong ties to the EU (the euro notwithstanding). That influx of investment would certainly go a long way to mitigating the effects of a global recession in the US.
Don’t know about that. De Gaulle was pretty damn racist himself (see the “Colombay-les-deux-Mosquées” speech), and quite the authoritarian as well. Of course, back then everybody was openly racist and/or antisemite, so…
We already are the safe place.
And the benefits would be minimal. Interest rates can’t really go any lower. It would just be more stagnant money parked in a weak economy and not doing anything, waiting for the next investment bubble to come along.
IMO Hollande’s victory is less about domestic French politics than it is about Euro-zone politics, specifically the ECB.
The idea behind German austerity was that by forcing countries to live within their means, they would be rewarded in the bond market. That hasn’t happened, and in fact European nations that have embraced the austerity model like the UK have seen their economy get worse, not better.
One of the few things that has worked for the Euro-crisis is the Long-Term Refinancing Operation from the ECB, and Hollande’s socialism supported this.
Bottom line: Sarkosy was selling more failed austerity, Hollande is looking for better fiscal union. The French election can be seen as a needed counterweight to the mostly-unchallenged austerity hawks.
Krugman has predicted the demise of the Euro, but that’s because he saw the currency union as essentially flawed from the start. Removing tools like devaluation from a nation’s fiscal policy in exchange for a currency backed across the continent was a good deal when the economy was up, but it doesn’t look so great now if you’re Greece, Italy, or Spain–countries which are tying themselves in knots to appease German banks and not seeing any reward for their efforts.
Based on this interpretation, Krugman in his latest column thinks that the recent elections in France and Greece are actually more likely to preserve the Euro because they offer real political power to challenge austerity (specifically by allowing the Euro to inflate–i.e. “print more money”):
Well, they got a majority.