Reaction to the latest election outcome

I don't think Italy should be all that concerned with markets. It's only a matter of confidence in the end. I am anti the euro and have been from the start. In my opinion Italy, and many others, would be far better without it. You can't put Greece and Germany in the same pan and expect harmony!!!

I would far prefer to see Italy go it alone. They have very large debt (so does just about everyone!!) but they do have a good means of getting out of the mess they're in if they can be free of Germany and Brussels! 

Just my 2 (euro) cents.

Good point, JA.

Italian voters made M5S Italy's single most popular political party while also giving the greatest plurality of votes to the PD coalition. The result is that the PD must either find common ground with M5S or with PdL. It will not be possible for a minority to govern alone in this Parliament. That's probably good for increasing the focus on promoting employment, and that's the #1 issue for voters, not whether the stock market is up or down 5 points on Tuesday.

Stock markets and currencies hate uncertainty. If Italy is constantly worried about the markets then they'll always be under the thumb of Germany etc.

Of course the short term would be hard, but I wouldn't just foresee Italy leaving. Is Italy really better off now it has the Euro than before? I have no statistics but I would seriously imagine not.

What on earth did countries do before the Euro came along? There is little communion between EU member states, countless languages, countless traditions and countless approaches.

Italy's lack of growth is not simply due to low investment, neither is the unemployment problem, especialy with young people.

Huge reforms need to take place here, as in the UK, as in France as in the USA and the majority of countries. The economics just don't work. It can't be growth, growth, growth, spend, spend, spend. We reach a point of saturation in the end.

Anyway, we won't be solving any problems here, and these are just opinions. My economics training ended at  A level. There are experts both for and against. 

I am extremely wary, though, of other countries motives for which government Italy does or does not form. Whichever path they choose should be primarily for the good of Italy, not other EU and Euro countries.

I get some of my information from some British and American press, where I find that sentences like “Italians keep voting for Berlusconi” or “Italians gave their vote to Beppe Grillo” are absolutely common. Also, interestingly, I’ve found that about 50% of the articles about politics in Italy published on the British press (not so much on American papers) contain the word “Mussolini”. I imagine that must be somehow familiar and comforting to that specific readership.

The problem with this “Italians do this” thingy it that it creates, in the reader’s mind, the idea that “Italians” are a sort of uniform mass of undistinguished entities all doing the same things and thinking the same way and being, well, Italians.

As a consequence, every time I meet someone from an English speaking country, knowing very well how he/she most likely gets their information from (because I have the same sources as they), I feel I have a sort of stigma: I know they see a dumb Berlusconi elector in me, and I have the onus to prove that, uh, we happen to be just as articulated here as in the place they come from, duh, and my political views happen to be quite different from what they’ve been led to believe, and so the views of more or less 80% of the Italian electorate - to which they often come up with something as smart as “you don’t sound like a typical Italian” and I’d like to slap them.

Now, I know that newspapers have to sell copies to people, and that people don’t like to be challenged much in their beliefs, but from the people on this forum (sorry gm ) I expected something better than &quotid Italians not expect that if they voted for Grillo and Berlusconi that it would throw the enconomic markets in a tizzy?” (answer: some didn’t even know, some didn’t care, some knew and still didn’t care. Italians.).

Rant over.

As for the results.

I am a PD voter. I have a (centre)-left leaning, I am what used to be called a progressive. I don’t mind high taxes in exchange for good universal services. The models I look at as the ones to be inspired by are the Scandinavian countries, or closer to home France, or closer still, let me say Emilia-Romagna, where I consider myself lucky to live. So my point of view is biased, but you know the bias now, so there.

My preferred outcome would have been a PD victory. Alternatively, a PD victory made possible by Monti’s support. Unlike many of the people who vote like I do, I like Monti a lot, I appreciate his competence, his dedication to the Italy cause, and his professionalism and seriousness. I’m a convinced Europhile (simul stabunt vel simul cadent) and, probably unusually for a leftie, I’m in favour of the so called “rigour” and of the fiscal discipline Monti was trying to impose on the Country. Backed up by a Left majority in the Parliament, Monti would have had to implement his policy with a keen eye on the social aspects of his actions, hitting the privileged and tax-evading ones, and favouring a social, inclusive approach.

Unfortunately (for me) the voters have chosen differently.

Paradoxically, this could be an even more left-wing government than the one I hoped for. An interesting aspect often overlooked, and probably not really understood, by foreigners, is that for the first time in the Republican history, the so called “moderati” (the Christian centre, the **YAWN** defenders of the traditional values and bla-bla-bla) are totally marginal in the Parliament. That is: it is possible to form a majority that backs up a Government, without them. Never ever happened before. It’s a unique opportunity, and one it would be just too dumb to miss.

On a series of things, the Left and the M5S converge a lot, so at this point, what I wish would happen is a PD-5 Stelle government able to do all the things many other European countries have done before and we haven’t yet because of the mephitic influence of the Church: legalize gay marriages, citizenship to the offspring of immigrants, strict anti-corruption laws, get rid of Berlusconi once and for all, and all those things that the “ancient regime” never wanted to implement, a shared agenda to modernize Italy and some of its laws, and maybe go back to vote two years from now in a completely changed scenario.

But being the Movimento 5 Stelle an anti-establishment movement by definition, since being anti-everything is a (silly) founding value of theirs, there’s a strong resistance to this. I’m afraid that this historical possibility will be lost for the stubbornness and the lack of common sense of Beppe Grillo and of a good chunk of his supporters. The movement is currently undergoing an internal debate on whether to “soil their hands” and engage in politics for real, or keep their virginity at the cost of making the country yet more unworthy of credit (markets do matter, Pauly).

What will happen, nobody knows. Really, lots of possibilities are open. Let’s wait and see. There’s nothing more that can be said at the moment.