Italian Elections and Politics 2018: Yellow Tide

[BigSkyBob]

   Pretty amazing that two Robert/o Fico politicians are active in politics at the same time, and both feature prominently in the news one week after another, one resigning and one winning election as speaker. What are the odds of that.

FICO scores do vary greatly!

[BigSkyBob]

To be clear: Mattarella said no to Savona but would have accepted one of Lega's main politicians as Finance Minister.
The point is that Lega and M5S wanted to break up from the euro while not having said it publicly one single time.

If a country aspired to create an export-oriented economy with large trade surpluses it would, in general, face the severe headwind of rising currencies that made its exports more expensive abroad while lowering the costs of imported goods. That assumes currencies float. If they didn't, the headwind would be less severe.

The Euro is a glorified fixed-exchange regime amongst the European states.

In the real world, that aspiring state is Germany,  and that export policy is succeeding spectacularly as the folks in Greece can attest.

Devaluation is the answer, and, leaving the Euro is the only path to devaluation. Otherwise, teaching German, English, and Dutch in primary school is the best hope Italian children have for a better life.

[BigSkyBob]

Is there a chance that the right gets an absolute majority and instead of M5S-Lega, Italy gets Lega-Forza Italia-FdI? Honestly, I'd say that would be a marginally better government, at least Berlusconi will put the brakes on the radical proposals (I still can't believe Berlusconi is Italy's best hope)

To be clear: Mattarella said no to Savona but would have accepted one of Lega's main politicians as Finance Minister.
The point is that Lega and M5S wanted to break up from the euro while not having said it publicly one single time.

If a country aspired to create an export-oriented economy with large trade surpluses it would, in general, face the severe headwind of rising currencies that made its exports more expensive abroad while lowering the costs of imported goods. That assumes currencies float. If they didn't, the headwind would be less severe.

The Euro is a glorified fixed-exchange regime amongst the European states.

In the real world, that aspiring state is Germany,  and that export policy is succeeding spectacularly as the folks in Greece can attest.

Devaluation is the answer, and, leaving the Euro is the only path to devaluation. Otherwise, teaching German, English, and Dutch in primary school is the best hope Italian children have for a better life.

Ah yes, because that worked flawlessly for Zimbabwe and Venezuela

Devaluation, aka, free floating currencies, is market forces in action. Quantitative easing is not. Advocating floating currencies is simply not advocating quantitative easing no matter how hard you try to conflate the two. The Deutchmark isn't rising relative to the Lira simply because there was a political decision to call the German currency the "Euro" and the Italian currency the "Euro" and then declare the two currencies of equal value in perpetuity. Fixed exchange rates are anti-market, as is quantitative easing.

[BigSkyBob]

I think both sides are to blame for this mess:

M5S + Lega for being stubborn and presenting no alternative name to President Matarella for Finance Minister and insisting on their extreme candidate.

Refusing to throw away your victory, aka the right to set public policy, for the right to organize the collection of trash simply isn't an example of being "stubborn.'

You must be logged in to read this quote.