Italy’s Results are Truly Forza Italia!

by Tom Luongo, Tom Luongo:

Europe is headed for a breakup.  But, after a year of watching the EU establishment work the polls just enough to maintain the status quo in the Netherlands, France and Germany I wasn’t expecting much from yesterday’s Italian elections.

But with turnout over 73% we got just that.  Voters were clearly motivated to change the course Italy is on.  Now, we knew that Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition would do well alongside upstart Five Star Movement.

The question was always going to be, however, how well would they do?

It looks like it was much better than the polls wanted us to believe.   Last week I told you the markets were getting nervous about this election.  This weekend the news was all about how subdued the reaction was to the polling.

As if a major technical breakout to the upside on Italian bond yields in the face of furious ECB buying wasn’t a strong enough market response?

But, that’s doesn’t fit the plan to gaslight voters and traders to worry about the potential outcome here.

The League of 5-Star Gentlemen

It looks like Five Start Movement will take more than 30% of the final tally, which is a couple of points above where polling had it tracking when the blackout went into effect two weeks ago.

The bigger result is that of The League (formerly The Northern League) who came off their secessionist mountain and ran hard on a platform of euroskepticism and anti-immigration.

The most important person in Italian politics right now is The League’s leader, Matteo “The EU can go F&%k itself” Salvini.

When the final votes are revealed, if The League out-polled Silvio “Establishment Stalking Horse” Berlusconi’s Forza Italia! then he has the hammer in coalition negotiations.

This is exactly the situation I was hoping for in this election. Because this paves the way for Salvini to pull out of the weak coalition with Berlusconi and form a stronger government with Five Star.

And at that point the price of Tums in Germany rises sharply on new demand.  Because the ‘agita’ over Italy’s untenable banking and debt situation will be enormous.

But, if you want to know what the real issue is just look at this map of Italian unemployment.

1% GDP growth is not something to cheer about when you have this kind of capital destruction for half of a country.   And with the euro above $1.20, just like Germany wants it, this is only making it harder for Italy to compete in world markets.

In other words, German strong-euro policy is creating the very election results now creating agita in Berlin.

Forza Populism!

Politicians are stupid.

They don’t know anything about currency, capital flow or substitution effects… except when it feathers their nests.  But, when a policy is inconvenient to them they invariably blame ‘the market’ which is another way of saying ‘blaming the people.’

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