Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Political Unity Collapses in Portugal

Enforcing austerity doesn't win much popular favor as the politicians in Portugal have discovered.  The center right government in Portugal has pretty much collapsed over the weekend.  Greece is also back in the news as it struggles to implement its own version of austerity.

No European government backing austerity will survive.  Germany's Angela Merkel will be the most prominent casualty as she faces the electorate next year.  Gone already are the political leaders of Greece, Spain, Italy, and France.  It won't be long before their successors are under siege as well.

The EU-ECB plan of increasing debt and forcing austerity on their populations has been a failure from day one.  The political unraveling of Europe was easy to predict and not at all surprising to watch.  The fear is that extremists of the far left will eventually assume power and Europe will become a different place.