An analysis of the political setup in Italy shows eurosceptics are on the verge of taking control of the country.
The only missing ingredient is an early election. And early elections are now the odds-on favorite.
Let’s back up a bit to fill in the pieces as to how things got to this point.
- Former prime minister Matteo Renzi stepped down in December after holding a referendum that failed miserably. See Renzi Resigns Following Crushing Referendum Defeat: Beppe Grillo, Marine le Pen, Matteo Salvina Tweets
- Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, appointed Paolo Gentiloni as the new prime minister after Renzi resigned. See Meet Paolo Gentiloni, 4th Consecutive Italian Technocrat Appointed Prime Minister: Renzi Not Vanquished Yet
- The president said he would not hold new elections until differences between how the lower house of parliament assigned seats were resolved.
- Point number three has been resolved. Both houses of Parliament are back on a proportional system.
New Elections
- New elections are possible now but the next scheduled elections are not until 2018.
- Matteo Renzi wants new elections in June. Even though he resigned, he wants back in. Renzi wants new elections this year because PD may oust him if he waits.
- Beppe Grillo wants elections as soon as possible because he believes he will win, and also because FI leader Silvio Berlusconi cannot run for prime minister until 2018 because of a tax fraud conviction.
- Berlusconi does not want early elections, but he is in the minority.
It is up to the president to call new elections, and there is pressure from at least two fronts for him to do so.
Election Polls
Chart from Opinion polling for the next Italian general election.
The situation for Renzi is actually way worse than it appears. Not only do polls tend to over-play support for PD, the party is about to splinter. Via email, Eurointelligence explains …
Whatever Happens in Italy, Grillo is Winning
Our pessimism about the political outlook for Italy was confirmed once more this morning with reports that the PD is now very likely heading for a split – the trigger being disagreement over the election date. Pier Luigi Bersani, Renzi’s predecessor as general secretary of the party, came out strongly against early election in June saying that the PD would be finished as a party if Renzi were to go ahead.
Renzi could assemble a majority in the Italian parliament in favour of a new electoral law and early elections, so this is technically doable. The question is, at what cost? Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement officially supports early elections, but Renzi probably has a point when he says that another year of political chaos in the PD would drive even more voters to Grillo, whose party thrives on the chaos in the country. In other words, Grillo wins both ways, and the likely design of the electoral law will also be favourable to his party. So much for the theories that there would be a technical stitch-up to keep the Five Star Movement out of power. The Italian establishment is not sufficiently united to be able to do this.
Massimo D’Alema, Renzi’s fiercest oponent within the PD, says he has done research on the potential electoral support for a party to the left of the PD which could count on 11-14% of the vote. With a weak centre-right and a fragmented left, the probability of a victory by the Five Star Movement, perhaps in alliance with other radical forces, must now be considered very high.
Wrong Five Ways
The don’t worry, it will never happen crowd said …
- Renzi would win the referendum – Wrong
- Renzi would not resign if he lost – Wrong
- Renzi would gracefully step aside after he resigned – Wrong
- PD would not splinter – Wrong
- The other parties would pass legislation making it impossible for M5S to gain control – Wrong
That same don’t worry, it will never happen crowd also proposed
- An alliance between Grillo and other parties won’t happen
- If an alliance does happen, parliament will not approve a referendum on the Euro
- If there is a referendum on the Euro, people will vote against leaving
- It still requires a constitutional amendment
Point number 6 is in the works right now. And if such an alliance does form and win (both are highly likely in my opinion), then all that is left to stop “Itexit” is fearmongering and points 8 and 9.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
‘Italeave’, please Mish.
Sounds better to me.
Yes
How about Italexit? Nice ring about it!
I’ll only believe it when it happens no matter how beneficial it might be to Italy or how much pain they suffer by maintaining the Euro.
The word “Solidarity” will be used to get help in one form or another in exchange for Italy handing over what little sovereignty it has left.
Should it leave the Euro it’s unlikely to leave the EU.
Should Italy leave euro the EU is unlikely to survive.
ditching the Euro, yet remaining in the EU makes little sense… all the regulation+costs but none of the “benefits”. See Brexit.
Why would Italy reinstate the Lira yet still take orders from Brussels? Makes no sense…
Italy is likely to surrender itself, I don’t see them having the balls to leave the Euro or eu. Thee Euro is a trap to facilitate integration.
Italy needs a gold standard lira to protect people from bank printers. Italy had several periods of super inflation with the old lira.
Probably more beneficial to their GDP would be if they decided August was not a holiday. Like if Spain ever decided to grow up and leave kindergarten, and that 13:00 -16:00 was not napping time.
Because working your a$$ off to make someone else money is the epitome of adulthood?
Wasn’t that the opening line in the Greek Work Ethic manifesto?
Makes sense where June to Sept is hot unless you opt for total AC, something that already overpowers the grid.
Also daylight is longer and people out evenings.
Some discussion over it, but for now it is a way of life, and one which helps keep the country slightly away from N. Europe.
Build more powerplants.
I don’t know. I just found out it was Saturday.
Mañana.
Anyway, the country is still in deficits and trying to cover past infrastructure misadventures.
impressed with the ñ. Usually takes me 3 or 4 tries on the keyboard before I remember where the snake is.
http://www.alexmusic.net/tele/tvshots/0411/nnn.jpg
The most fickle country in the EU should be the first to leave. Besides, they will write off all their debt when they convert to the lira. In a year or two everyone will be wanting to lend them money, just like Iceland.
Since their debt is in Euros, and the Euro will still exist, they should still have the debt.
Fair case for it being odious, but then what debt isn’t unless you are loyal to its owners?
Just remember, debt is never incurred as a single entry ledger transaction. Those owners of the debt are no longer owners of an asset (of course the gov’t printing answer – for the owner side if it’s sovereign debt, but nonetheless debt was a burden for which you once received a benefit)
So it is a wonder that the burden of debt manages to be sold off so readily, and that investors are so eager to provide credit for the opportunity to own it.
When we examin government business the returns are understood to be constructed of future taxation, but those that invest in that venture are subscribing to political enterprise . When a society judges that previous political venture was flawed and corrupt, and there is no standard for that but the voting booth or revolution, it installs a new version, and those that credited the old one are anulled in their claims along with it. There is no international law higher than sovereign law but war, and we would hope that the highest international bodies would reject and defend from that outcome in the arbitrage they hold.
Spain is heading towards the possibility of a new election also.
After the PSOE allowed through a PP minority government, the PSOE split into two factions, Diaz now heading the flexible/surrender monkey and Sanchez the hardline ‘always no to PP’. There is a PSOE party election in the next months, those two facing off in militant vote. Who then controls the party then controls all stances taken in congress, and should Sanchez win he will likely block parliament and force a new election.
it’s just a matter of time until the Eurozone breaks up now.
Brexit, “It’s-it” (the San Francisco treat)
My bet is on Italy and / or the Netherlands for triggering the final EU implosion. France and Germany are cuckified and impotent beyond belief so little hope there.
So long as France and Germany are in the EU continues.
All other countries are bauble side shows and don’t matter. Insignificant.
France, not NL, is the country to watch… strong rural & nationalist roots, ripe for populist revolt.
The powers that be in NL will never allow NL to act first in an anti-EU manner… see Pim Fortuyn.
French agriculture has a problem without CAP. No EU = no CAP.
CAP = common agricultural policy = protection and subsidy.
They won’t leave. Too many hand outs received.
Stop the handouts, they leave.
Italians like Greeks are too much of cuckoos in nests.
As long as they can cow the milk, theh will stay in EU.
Too bad for all other countries.
One needs to see the difference between politicians and the crowd to understand that. About Euro, some countries have been just behaving to rape the system and not supporting it, ie creating capital loss to the Eurozone only.
I would disagree about the Italians. They are 100% EU, just not pro-Euro now.
Italy has contributed from early on.
A possible outcome of Italian Euro problems is they give up all sovereignty in exchange for a massive bailout. This is not impossible if Schulz brainwashed the Germans as chancellor, Solidarity and all that.
Italy will cease to have much self determination. May be the game plan for Greece too.
Once one or 2 go that route others will follow and the super-state without national governments really begin to exist.
That’s when the trouble starts as freedom fighter groups will rise, imho, against the Empire.
“…they give up all sovereignty in exchange for a massive bailout.”
It’s a possibility, sure, but such a “solution” would never hold together. In the current political/economic climate, the voters/population would never stand for it.
Do you really think the Italians will allow themselves to seen & treated as doormats as the Greeks have done? No way in hell.
Agree mpower . There are some very high level games underway that we are not privy to. That a bunch of accountants and book salesmen are going to provide the answers and earn public respect across EU is not likely. The methods being used are slowly becoming divulged to and understood by society and political participants who oppose the framework. The latter find space where the traditional establishment has sold out. I would say a minimum one third of any nation are ready and willing to exit if truly placed in that position of choice. That does not mean the rest are decided or convinced to the opposite, maybe a third as well agree to EU or simply don’t want change. In certain countries the % is greater to leave EU or Eurozone, in others a change of how/what is presented will have the same result.
Spain has a strong herding instinct, Greece is used to enduring rebellion, Italy is almost factional, France… well France is pretty much screwed, and they are still trying to figure what comes after a police state.
I do, yes.
Italian banks borrow € 360 bn from other European central banks through Target 2 to fund themselves because of capital flight. The banks have non performing loans of 20%. Youth employment of 40%. A contracting economy.
Awful demographics too, massive pension, health bills etc.
Add a Euro that even now is too strong for them and they can’t get off their knees. They won’t exit, they will give up freedom/sovereignty.
Going back to the Lira, defaulting & taking their medicine for 4-8 years makes FAR more sense (for IT) than ceding all sovereignty & still being trapped inside the EU/Euro.
I don’t think your conclusion holds up to game theory/rationale.
Doesn’t matter, they are divided and beaten down and lack strong leadership of any type. How many technocratic leaders in series now?
Putty.
Mish. I still think that you completely underestimate the determination of the well paid, comfortably off, “liberal elite” to keep the Euro show on the road. They will steal, corrupt, subvert, and gerrymander to prevent the Euro and the EU breaking up. They will do absolutely anything to keep their pet projects going, along with their well paid jobs and pensions, and at the moment they are in key positions to keep it going.
The € system is in deep imbalance. Strong NCBs lend € 1200 bn unsecured to weak NCBs (Greece, Spain,Italy) to compensate for capital flight via Target 2.
I totally concur murdomcsponge, people outside the EU/Euro cannot understand the zealots.
I totally concur murdomcsponge, people outside the EU/Euro cannot understand the zealots and the lengths they will go to. Brexit will be a test case.
We understand the zealots… I lived in europe for 6 years.
What people inside the EU (incl. the zealots) cannot understand is that the experiment is doomed… all the effort & lengths mean nothing b/c the EU structure is fatally flawed.
Further, the zealots are LOSING, whether they want to admit it or not…
Brexit
Trump
Le Pen
Wilders
etc.
The zealots may delay but cannot stop the inevitable…
Only Trump is a reality.
Brexit hasn’t happened yet- doesn’t count until it happens.
The other 2 are might be’s – don’t count until they happen.
the winds of change are blowing hard… you can stay inside & look out the window, but the winds are still howling out there, day & night… to say otherwise betrays a heavy dose of denial.
Cannot come soon enough. Italy can’t take a trick without its monetary sovereignty.
“EU auditors blocked from viewing evidence by ECB in probe into supervision rules”
Americans could be the lucky ones. I agree with the below:
“David Engels, a historian at the Free University of Brussels, drew parallels between Europe and the fall of the Roman Republic to make the alarming prediction.
He said: “In 20 to 30 years Europe will have become an authoritarian or imperial state, after a phase resembling civil war and decay.”
I would suggest even after 20-30 years there will be groups fighting for separation and self-determination against a monolithic super-state. That said, most of them were under Nazism, Fascism or Communism so it just another “ism” of some sort.
No– because people who aren’t paranoids– like you are — want to live in a peaceful, cooperative place. And they can make it a peaceful place even without a huge supply of large screen TVs.
BTW I’m an Italian citizen.
Ah yes, cooperate and you will left in peace, but why would you need EU for that?
Are you saying, in a roundabout sort of way, that they can maintain the peace even as the country descends into poverty?
So is my wife and we spend a lot of time in Lucca, Rome and some in Sicily near Erice. Sad to see what has happened to that country since first I went in 1993.
The best thing the young educated can do is leave.
The Greeks have been brutalized and they are still in the Eurozone. They were willing to give up their sovereignty. The Italians are the same. While many are suffering, and the only way to relieve that suffering is dump the euro, the majority are doing fine in the Eurozone. That majority isn’t about to sacrifice for their fellow Italians. If changing our financial system would help African-Americans and poor whites, would the rest of us take that risk to our own wealth? Hell no and you folks know that. We happily give up our sovereignty to Wall Street.
Difference is you have an unelected elite in the EU spouting about “solidarity” and if national leaders are not strong enough to tell them to go screw themselves the transfers will occur.
My take is Schulz will be a plant in Germany to get the Paymaster to agree to massive transfers in exchange for the payment receivers handing over the last vestiges of sovereignty.
It’s a way for the elite to stitch it all up.
The only blockage is Germany as the south is becoming so depressed it will agree. Paymaster needs to be brought to the party, enter stage left Schulz leading the Germans by the nose.
I am starting to think european political elite is really braindead.
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Leaving Euro is not problematic if one leaves to their own currency with their own central bank and if the country leaving lets their new currency be free floating with value decided by markets and if the country leaving does NOT crash their companies with re-payments in Euro but tells that re-payments will be in local currency and creditors can eat the rest.
ECB can fund away the problems this creates for banks in euro area and the newly independent central bank of the leaving country can fund away the problems of that countrys banks.
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EVERY country in Euro should LEAVE. The sooner the better.
There are barriers, not least balancing the books.
It is a burning building with no exit.
“Italy Increasingly Likely to Abandon the Euro”
Push keeps shoving. Something has to give.
New Italian prime minister Gentiloni has signed a deal with Libya where Libya will work actively to stop smugglers business and take people trying to reach Italy (with dreams of getting to welfare paying europe that starts from Italy northwards) back to Libya from Libyan waters.
Italy will be paying for equipment for Libyan coast guard.
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EU has joined this deal and promises to pay Libya 200 million euros to fund camps with good conditions inside Libya from where welfareseekers can return back home or to move to peaceful parts of africa if they have other reasons to “flee” their home countries other than dreaming about getting free apartment and free welfare money and permanent residence for life based on just a fairytale story of lies with NO facts and NO proof needed which are what lured 99% of “asylum seekers” to Europe.
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This seems too reasonable from first reports to be an EU policy because this does not make Libya the biggest lure in africa that would be luring millions to come like the previous incompetent ideas about accepting asylum applications (to welfare EU) in northern Africa that several EU leaders were repeating during 2015 in their total incompetence as the “solution” to problems created by Merkel/Germany and sweden luring people to come with free welfare money and free apartments and EU-commission luring people to come with stupid EU-directives and incompetent EASO which increased acceptance rates of asylum applications and allowed liars and cheats to get asylum and Italy and greece luring people to come by pushing everyone towards welfare paying europe through open borders that Merkel demanded must be kept open.
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In the total insanity of 2015 some clueless politicians even stated that EU should accept asylum applications inside Turkey which would have meant 3 million syrians currently staying in COMPLETE SAFETY inside Turkey making an asylum claim IMMEDIATELY to get to EU welfare.
The key to stopping the rush towards Italy is for Italy to stop pushing un-registered “asylum seekers” to northern welfare Europe and instead REGISTER EVERYONE and then stop giving asylums so easily to the registered asylum seekers (in order to hope they leave Italy and move to welfare paying Europe after getting residence permit from Italy which entitles them to free movement inside EU thanks to the incompetence that is free movement inside EU).
Italy should register everyone and REJECT 95% of asylum applications.
Currently Italy like other EU countries is giving asylums based on lies, fairytales and stories the welfareseekers have memorized from their facebook groups where successful asylum seekers post those stories that got them asylum to help their countrymen lie to incompetent european asylum bureaucrats.
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There is currently no demand for proof of “persecution” from asylum seekers and just a fairytale story full of lies will get you asylum.
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Furthermore international treaties state that if internal flight is possible the asylum claim should be rejected so 100% of asylum applications from iraqis, afganistanis and somalis should be REJECTED because all these countries have peaceful areas.
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Also ALL syrians in EU traveled from a SAFE country namely Turkey so they have no rightful claim for asylum anywhere in EU and the situation is even more ridiculous when it comes to asylum shoppers who traveled through Greece-Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia-Austria to Germany and even more ridiculous to those who traveled from Germany to Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland or Norway.
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In facebook age the previous years sloppy, lax and incompetent asylum system does NOT work so much stricter asylum system must be taken in use with demand for ACTUAL PROOF of “persecution” before getting asylum instead of facebook circulated “stories”.
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The system where one gets free apartment for life, free welfare money for life, permanent residence and citizenship despite being a welfare bum and family re-unification straight to welfare based on just a story is completely insane and asylums must be made TEMPORARY meaning 1-year at a time and NO FREE STUFF.
Sorry to be the negative one but it’s just a temporary delay. People will build up there. I wouldn’t rely on Libya, a failed state, and the influx is too large.
Medicin San Frontiers has something to say on this too.
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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An analysis of the political setup in Italy shows eurosceptics are on the verge of taking control of the country.
O/T – Look at the clowns McCain and Lindsay recently in Ukraine causing trouble.
What a pair of wankers.
Reblogged this on sentinelblog.
Take this too the bank when it comes to the Italians and the Spanish. Germany and Brussels demanded austerity, higher taxes, passage of migrants / refugees and relinquishment of more sovereignty to the EU in exchange for being strung along with more loans and indentured subservience to Germany and Brussels. DO NOT EXPECT THE ITALIANS OR SPANISH TO ACCEPT DICTATES OF BRUSSELS AND GERMANY LIKE THE GREEKS! DO NOT EXPECT THEM TO ACCEPT MIGRANTS / REFUGEES AND AUSTERITY. MANY ITALIANS AND SPANISH ARE POOR AND THERE IS HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT AND THEY HAVENT EXPERIENCED GROWTH SINCE JOINING THE EURO. BOTH ITALIANS AND SPANISH ARE A BRITTLE BRANCH INCAPABLE OF FURTHER SACRIFICE WITHOUT BREAKING OFF LIKE BRITAIN.
frankly I’m shocked Greece has stayed in the Euro and the EU