Greek Fire, Part 63

Elections yesterday in Greece and France portend serious trouble ahead for the euro.  First in Greece, conservative New Democracy has won the most seats in parliamentary elections, followed by centrist PASOK, and together they could form a government without leftist Syriza.  The problem is that PASOK won't play ball without Syriza in the fold.

...the Greek PASOK party of former PM G-Pap may have thrown a grenade into coalition discussion, following an announcement by Katerina Diamantopoulou that Pasok will not join into a coalition government with ND unless Syriza also joins said coalition. Which Syriza stated moments ago it would not do. The question then comes whether ND can form a government (150+ seats) with any of the other remaining parties (up to and including neo-nazi New Dawn or the communists... why is there no Pirate party in Greece?). The answer is most likely not, but not before some serious horse trading shows that the second Greek elections has achieved nothing, and the world now has to look forward to a 3rd Greek election round, some time in August...

In other words, still no government in Greece, as expected.   PASOK has correctly determined that if New Democracy and PASOK form a government now with Syriza, the two of them will be destroyed in the next elections as they take all the blame.  Syriza would win an outright majority in the following elections (which would be sooner rather than later ar more than 75% of Greece is now against austerity).  No Syriza to take their part of the blame, no government...and we're now stuck in the exact same boat as in May.  Nothing has changed.  There will be no Greek government.

In France, there's the opposite problem:  French parliamentary elections have given an outright majority of Francois Hollande's Socialists.

The Socialist bloc secured between 296 and 320 seats in the parliamentary election runoff, according to reliable projections from a partial vote count, comfortably more than the 289 needed for a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.

The result means Hollande won't need to rely on the environmentalist Greens, projected to win 20 seats, or the Communist-dominated Left Front, likely to have just 10 deputies, to pass laws. The centre-left already controls the upper house of parliament, the Senate. 

Now things get interesting.  The French have completely rejected the center-right and now the country is dominated by the left.  We'll see what Hollande can do with it...and Germany is going to be pissed.

The Greek Fire continues scorching the world.

[UPDATE]  And I see Spain's interest rates have now breached the 7% danger zone this morning.  Hold on to your crapola, people.