PIIGS Coming Home to Roost: Europe's Coming Elections Maelstrom
Europe's Elections: A Coming Storm?
by Conn Hallinan - CounterPunch
left-leaning Podemos party.
Between now and next April, four members of the European Union (EU) will hold national elections that will go a long ways toward determining whether the 28-member organization will continue to follow an economic model that has generated vast wealth for a few, widespread misery for many, and growing income inequality.
The choice is between an almost religious focus on the “sin” of debt and the “redemption” of austerity, as opposed to a re-calibration toward economic stimulus and social welfare.
Pablo Igesias, leader of Spain’s left-leaning Podemos party.
The backdrop for elections in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland is one of deep economic crisis originally ignited by the American financial collapse of 2007-08. That meltdown burst real estate bubbles all over Europe—particularly in Spain and Ireland—and economies from the Baltic to the Mediterranean went off the rails. Countries like Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal saw their GDPs plummet, their banks implode and their unemployment rates reach levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Debt levels went through the ceiling.