Europe Then, Europe Now...

[jpatter666]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

& the answer is... 'shock & awe' printing!



wanna place a side bet on the reaction of gold prices?

You'd have lost so far -- going down today. Which perversely makes sense -- they've kicked the can a few more paces for now.

[c1ue]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

Merkel Now:

Actually, Merkel Now:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...693917,00.html

Key State Vote Handicaps Merkel


Photo Gallery: 15 Photos

dpa

Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and their coalition partner the Free Democrats have been voted out of power in Sunday's election in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The defeat will make governing harder for the German chancellor and could even see her being challenged as CDU leader.

In the end, her strategy did not pay off. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had refrained from taking any potentially unpopular decisions in the run-up to Sunday's state election in North Rhine-Westphalia in the hope of securing victory for her center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and their coalition partner of choice, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), which also form Germany's coalition government in Berlin.



But as the results of Sunday's vote came in, it became clear that voters had dealt the CDU a heavy blow. According to provisional results, Merkel's party only got 34.6 percent of the vote, down from 44.8 percent in 2005. The FDP got 6.7 percent of the vote, meaning that the two parties do not have the majority they need to form a coalition government in the state.

Combine that with disorder in the UK:

A UK Minority Government Would Not Last Long

DPA

UK citizens could be headed to the polls for a second time later this year.

If the British Conservatives are unable to form a rare coalition government, a second UK general election within a matter of months is the likely outcome, says Oxford University professor of government Vernon Bogdanor.

The outcome of the general election shows what a phlegmatic and conservative people the British are. They faced, after all, in the last parliament, two huge crises. The first was an economic crisis, the credit crunch. The second was a political crisis, the revelation, as a result of Freedom of Information legislation, that a large number of MPs, from all parties, had abused the expenses system. Three MPs now face criminal prosecution. Amongst the worse claims were those for second houses by MPs living less than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from London, claims for duck-houses and for cleaning a moat surrounding a stately home.



The expenses crisis caused the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons, who had tried to prevent freedom of information legislation from being applied to MPs expenses; and it was widely thought to have been a defining moment in the relationship between parliament and the people. Some predicted that, in consequence, turnout in the general election would fall, while others suggested that new and even extremist parties would profit -- the Greens, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and even the neo-fascist British National Party (BNP). At the very least, so it was thought, the Liberal Democrats, who had not been in government since World War I, would benefit.

In the event, none of this happened. Turnout rose from 61 to 65 percent. The new parties failed completely, except for the Greens, who won one seat. The Liberal Democrats lost seats rather than winning them. Voters stuck with the traditional parties.

Electoral System Works Against the Conservatives

But the election produced a hung parliament, the first since 1974. Despite the unpopularity of Gordon Brown's Labour government, and the large lead enjoyed in the opinion polls by David Cameron's Conservatives for much of the previous parliament, the Conservatives ended up 20 seats short of an overall majority. In Germany, of course, under the proportional representation system, hung parliaments are the norm, and stable coalitions result. In the more adversarial political culture of Britain, however, coalitions are seen as exceptional; the parties are not accustomed to the compromises involved in coalition government.
In the general election, the Conservatives secured 36 percent of the vote, Labour 29 percent and the Liberal Democrats 23 percent. One might think that a hung parliament is the right outcome in such a situation, since no party had won a majority of the vote. But, in the 2005 election, Labour won 35 percent of the vote, the Conservatives 32 percent and the Liberal Democrats 22 percent, and this produced a comfortable majority for Labour of 66 seats. If the figures of 2010 were reversed, and Labour secured 36 percent with the Conservatives on 30 percent, Labour would have had a majority of around 100!

[Fiat Currency]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

Actually, Merkel Now:


Combine that with disorder in the UK:

We'll have to keep a close watch for sure. However, Canada's been running for 4 years now with a similar minority government in a similar British parliamentary system.

[vanvaley1]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

When it gets here in force...the great inflation...perhaps a thread entitled 'The Great Flushing' will identify who will be on 'The Arc' and the reasoning and steps they took to be there.

[jk]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

“They are not cranking up the printing presses,” said James Nixon, co-chief European economist at Societe Generale SA in London. “This is a much more targeted, surgical approach. They buy the duff stuff that no one in the market will touch.”

sounds a lot like the fed buying mbs that no one wanted to touch. the "targeted, surgical approach" is to monetize junk at par. no need to "target" credits that the market still wants. if there was a credit bubble, excess credit fueled by unrealistically low, manipulated interest rates in the form of phony low mbs in the u.s, phony low sovereign rates in the eu, then there's been a lot of junk issued- claims for which there is no real collateral. the printing has already been done. now we just have the process of turning the funny money junk credits into coin of the realm.

[GRG55]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

We'll have to keep a close watch for sure. However, Canada's been running for 4 years now with a similar minority government in a similar British parliamentary system.

I agree with you. All this huffing and puffing in the press about a "hung parliament" seems so much overkill. Many of the nations of continental Europe are governed with perpetual coalition governments - Germany is just one example. I suspect the politicians know that UK voters are fed up with them, what with expense account pork and so forth, and Lib Dems in particular risk being punished even more severely if they demonstrate they cannot form a coalition and make it work to avoid an unecessary and premature trip to the polls.

[nitroglycol]

Re: Europe Then, Europe Now...

Indeed, the rather pejorative term "hung parliament" is almost entirely British. In most other English-speaking countries, the more value-neutral term "minority parliament" is used.