After a refreshing day off, I return to see that both Greece and France have effectively turned their backs on Austerity measures, by voting in folks who are opposed to all this “save the world’s economy by not spending like a drunken sailor on furlough…” (OK that is my interpretation).
Can we blame them? Would you vote for a party that is saying, “Vote for us and your services will be cut, and you will pay more taxes (and possibly you will lose your job and your pensions will be cut)..”? I must admit it would take someone with a very strong “financial moral compass” to vote that way, and I guess our European cousins don’t feel that way right now.
What will happen now? Lots more fun and excitement on the markets in the short term, that is for sure, but saying you will ignore stern economic measures and actually doing it is another story (just ask Bob Rae what happened to him when he got elected Premier of Ontario).
Make sure you have the “financial safety bar” tightly fastened because this financial roller coaster is about to get a lot more interesting!
Yep few people are going to willingly vote in a government that wants to cut spending and increase taxes. People are more concerned with the money directly coming out of their pockets than what affect it will all have on the economy.
It should be an interesting experiement if a stimulous will work better than austerity. Personally, I think it should be a combination of austerity and stimulous.