Politics and the Euro

There's a lot going on here in Europe politically and financially. I am not sure how much American media is covering of it but it's a big deal here and every cab driver, waiter and tour guide will give you their opinion if you give them a second.

While I was in London they had their elections. I listened to some of their debates on tv and I actually liked the way they talked. They don't seem to do the platitudes and evading the question that our politicians do. They seem more direct. They have some unusual ideas, I think, but at least they put it out there without getting slippery about it.

As it turned out their election was a huge fiasco, similar to our Florida election debacle. Here this election had generated a lot of interest and a lot of people were planning to vote, many for the first time, but when they got to their election places the lines were so long that the election posts closed and large numbers of people did not get to vote. They have a 4 party system: Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Labor and another one that I cant remember. Their Prime Minister is actually selected by the majority party in parliament. The election did not establish a clear majority so no one party can establish who the PM would be which meant a sort of limbo where Gordon Brown would remain for the time being. There was a newspaper with a headline that said, "Squater at 10 Downing Street" which I thought was funny. Anyway, the parties have been doing deals with each other to try and join up to create a majority and as a result Gordon Brown has resigned and replaced by David Cameron.

Right before I left, the other big thing that happened is that Greece has essentially declared bankruptcy. They cannot pay their debt. It has all of the EU countries freaked. (The London Pound and the Euro are at low points which is great for me.) But as part of the EU, Greece uses the Euro. Normally when a country is in a situation like Greece, they would devalue their currency in order to try to stabilize. Because they are on the Euro they don't have that option so the other EU countries are faced with having to bail out Greece. It has created this sort of tension between the Germanic and Latin. The Germanic countries have been good managers, frugal and careful, and the Latin countries - not so much. The Germanic countries are grumbling about having to bail out Greece. I was talking to a cab driver in London about the elections and whether he was going to vote, he said it doesn't matter to him which party gets elected because he thought the future was going to be bleak for him financially. I asked why and he grumbled, "well, someone has to pay off all that debt.". He meant the Greek debt and it struck me that he made it sound like it was going to land on his shoulders personally. But I guess when you think in the big picture, I suppose that it will.