So the ‘loony Leftie’, Alexis Tsipras, won the Greek election, just missing an absolute majority by only two seats but making the task of forming a coalition exceedingly easy. It’s hardly surprising that he won given the suffering the Greek people have, and still are, suffering and the fact that he has promised them increased wages, increased pensions and a reversal of the privatisation of state industries. It is a sign of how desperation can impair intelligence that so many Greeks actually swallowed that nonsense whole!
A great poker game will now ensue between Mr. Tsipras and Frau Merkel and it will be fascinating to see who bluffs longest and hardest. Yes, the ‘Kaiserin’ might allow a delay in Greek interest payments but there is no way she is going to allow the entire Greek debt to be forgiven. Apart from her own voters who are already becoming restive at the prospect of the ECB printing money, the result of the poker game will be watched carefully by the Italians and Spanish and any give-aways will be seized on by them to help alleviate their own problems, not the least of which is the rise of equally ‘Loony’ parties in their electorates.
However, I was struck by an interview on Sky News this morning with a Greek political and economic commentator (sorry, no name) who struck me as being rather a shrewd observer. He suggested that Mr. Tsipras will have been rather content not to have an absolute majority because then he would have been a prisoner of his own party of mouth-dribblers and eye-ball swivellers. Needing a coalition partner, albeit a small one, gives Mr. Tsipras a narrow gap through which he can slither when it becomes clear that his promises are not worth a drachma!
The Greek people have ended up with yet another two-faced, lying liar who can’t spell the word ‘economics’. But it’s their fault, they believed his nonsense and they voted for him. The only sensible solution for Greece is to drop the euro and take the hit. It will hurt but with a devalued drachma they will soon recover. Alas, they still cling to it like passengers from a sinking Greek liner clutching at wreckage in a stormy sea. What’s the Greek for ‘suckers’?
