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May 6th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
They also think his combative stance towards Angela Merkel is unlikely to
survive his first encounter with the German Chancellor who was openly
rooting for Sarkozy to beat him. However unpromising the chemistry (the “Merkozy”
alliance which led to the 25-nation EU austerity pact was hardly a love
match, after all) a new Franco-German line will have to be hammered out as
the only form of leadership the Eurozone is capable of mustering. Hollande
will be an awkward, foot-dragging partner in this new dance.
Their joint statement will wax eloquent about growth, to be sure, but keeping
a lid on the debt crisis will remain their key priority, in order to save
the euro itself. Mrs Merkel – herself up for re-election next year, and
desperate not to be accused of saddling German taxpayers with the cost of
the rest of the continent’s fiscal incontinence – has said the austerity
pact “is not up for renegotiation”; and she means it.
So tonight’s result is unlikely to turn into another Mitterand moment. The
last socialist to be installed in the Elysée, back in 1981, invited
communists into his cabinet, nationalised banks and set out to create a
workers’ paradise – only to be knocked back by markets through repeated
devaluations of the franc and eventually forced into “cohabitation”
with his rightist opponents. Hollande’s impact will be less ideologically
driven and more circumscribed from the start.
Business as usual, then: a continuing series of compromises holding weak
governments and a crippled currency in place until the momentum of global
recovery finally pulls them out of the mire?
Sadly, that’s the optimistic view. If signals suggest no market cataclysm to
come when trading opens on Monday morning – no stampede of investors trying
to liquidate French government bonds and bank shares – we’d be foolish to
expect the sanguine mood to last as the summer hots up.
In Athens, the least bad election outcome will be a clinging-on of the current
uncomfortable coalition between centre-right New Democracy and socialist
Pasok, thereby offering continuity however painful. But many voters have
migrated to anti-austerity parties well to the left of Pasok, others to the
far right – and a chaotic result could lead to rapid unravelling of the
Greek bail-out deal that is barely two months old.
Rather than being seen as a step towards euro-implosion, however, renewed
mayhem in Greece will be hailed by many Europeans as evidence that extreme
austerity was the wrong answer in the first place – that the policies
imposed by Brussels, the European Central Bank and the IMF are too damaging,
and politically unsustainable; and that the death-spiral of the Greek and
Spanish economies is proof that an urgent U-turn in the direction of
tax-fuelled Keynesian stimulus is the only way out.
Barack Obama’s supposed success in promoting US recovery by this method is
held up as the model, without acknowledging that recovery comes quicker in
America because its public sector is half the size of most of Europe’s, its
taxes are lower and its businesses are largely free of Brussels-style red
tape.
But the anti-austerity narrative is a rolling bandwagon, crowded with many
nationalities – including our own Labour front bench and the likes of EU
economics commissioner Olli Rehn, who is calling for large-scale investment
in infrastructure. And it threatens head-on collision not only with the IMF
under former French finance minister Christine Lagarde, but also with bond
markets populated by investors who inherently distrust tax-and-spend, and
more importantly who fear “haircuts” on their Spanish and French
portfolios, on a vastly bigger scale than they have already suffered in
Greece, if those governments can no longer meet debt obligations and if
their under-capitalised banks fail.
So the harmless-looking Hollande may have his post-election honeymoon and his
photo-opportunity with Angela Merkel, and the Left everywhere will hail
tonight’s result as a turning point for Europe. But before the summer’s out,
markets may well be shouting that it was a turning in the wrong direction.
* Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator
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