As Greece attempts to form a coalition government which may or may not abide by the austerity terms it earlier negotiated its continental neighbors, Europe is quite possibly teetering on a financial crisis. Both The Telegraph and The Guardian are running live blogs covering the debt crisis. By the time I finish writing this blog post, everything will have possible changed. These live blogs are a great resource.
As you probably know Greece just had elections which Syriza garnered almost 17% of the vote compared to the Socialists, the ruling party, came in at 13%, a loss of over 30% from the last election. The New York Times calls Syriza a pro-Euro, anti-Austerity party. Basically the situation comes down to this: Greece hates the austerity plan, can’t form a government, and threatens to leave the Euro; Europe wants Greece to implement austerity and stay with the Euro. New elections for Greece are most likely possibly, which the anti-Austerity parties would probably do even better.
While all of this is going on, Germany’s most populous state handed Chancellor Merkell and austerity a stunning defeat on Sunday. The Social Democrats beat Merkell’s Christian Democrats 39% to 26%. The news here is that the Christian Democrats lost 8% of the vote since the last election. And across the Rhine today, France’s first socialist president took the oath of office today. French President François Hollande will be meeting later today with Merkell in Berlin.