Forum Post: Italians vote out austerity

What Italy's next government will look like, or even if there will be another Italian government, may not yet be clear after the just-concluded national elections, but that the European Union policy of austerity at all costs was delivered a crushing defeat is not in doubt. Why should that be surprising, when unending austerity is being demanded of the Italian people who have only to look to Greece to see they are being driven towards genocide?

The result triggered displays of outright psychosis, however, from British empire fanatics who insist that "there is no alternative" to the "death spiral" into which their policies have sent Europe. Financial Times commentators called it "catastrophic" that "a majority of Italians issued a clear basta to austerity." Lombard Street Research told the London Guardian the result "is astonishing." Barrons weekly screamed that "Italian Election Results Leave Markets Shocked, Shocked!" A "nasty surprise," an IG Markets analyst told London's Daily Telegraph. Wall Street's Bloomberg wire service complained that "this is the first European election in which voters didn't do the right thing. They gave surprising support to politicians who reject austerity and, in some cases, the euro," adding: "This could become a major problem if it proves contagious."

Markets fell across Europe, meaning that the eurozone crisis is "back." Spain's stock market fell and its yields on its debt rose only slightly less dramatically than Italy's, whose 6-month paper doubled in cost. Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo feared that the bond spread increase "is a jump to nowhere that does not bode well either for Italy or for Europe." His colleague, Economics Minister Luis de Guindos, "hoped" that a stable government would emerge in Italy, because "what is good for Italy is good for Spain."

The Spanish conservative daily, ABC, used the occasion to emphasize that "the Italian vote has sent a significant message to the rest of Europe... It could be said that in Italy the anti-European party won. Around 60% of Italians have shown themselves to be against the line set by Brussels."

Some pro-British ideologues were able to recognize that the veneer of political and economic stability in the eurozone has been ripped off, but refuse to conceive of scrapping their system for one which will work, a Glass-Steagall-anchored system of productive credit. Germany's Economics Minister Philipp Rösler declared absurdly that "there is no alternative to the structural reforms that are already underway and which include consolidating the budget and boosting competitiveness." European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso did him one better, telling a Reuters summit on the future of the Euro Zone — "with passion," according to Reuters — that he "hope[d] we are not going to follow the temptation to give in to populism" just because of a vote in one member state, since EU austerity had worked in Latvia and was showing results in Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Greece!

And full-steam ahead on hyperinflation. London's Guardian wrote that bailouts of Italy and Spain — Europe's third- and fourth-largest economies! — are back on the agenda, and Barrons magazine threw out that the Italian results may require "Bernanke to the rescue?"