Italy’s Government on Verge of collapse: Next Trumpian Domino to Fall? | MishTalk

Italy’s Government on Verge of collapse: Next Trumpian Domino to Fall? | MishTalk

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Italy is looking more and more like Britain just before the Brexit vote. The establishment politicians have badly misjudged the feeling of the electorate, and it looks like things are slipping away. This is likely exacerbated by the fact that Britain has paid no price at all for Brexit, and the US seems to be doing well, and Trump is handing the transition very well. If either Italy or Austria breaks against the EU and towards populism, all bets are off. These things have a way of taking on a life of their own, and of growing organically once people feel that change can be had.

Change is always unnerving, and confusing, but seldom results in the wildly dystopian results that the media is currently spinning. The problem there is the media is deeply in the pocket of the socialists in Europe, and the progressives in the US. They are merely the PR department of these political movements. I expect these changes will force the media to change or die. I don't much care which anymore. 

Italy and Austria elections keep Europe on edge

"Nationwide votes in Austria and Italy on December 4 are causing palpable anxiety in Europe that, as in the Chicken Licken folk tale, this will be the day when the sky starts falling.

Austria will re-run its presidential election, which in May a far-right candidate came within a whisker of winning. Italy will hold a constitutional reform referendum on which Matteo Renzi, prime minister, has staked his political prestige.

Alarmists fear that victory for the Austrian far right and defeat for Mr Renzi will signal that Europe, no stranger to anti-establishment insurgencies, is being submerged by a populist tide washing in from the Atlantic. This tide swept Britons in June into voting to leave the EU and last week lifted Donald Trump to the US presidency.

In the context of rising populism, Austria’s election is arguably the more worrying event. No European democracy has elected a far-right head of state since the second world war. The symbolism of such a breakthrough in Austria, annexed to Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945, would be immense.

Yet financial markets seem more unnerved by the prospect that Mr Renzi will lose the referendum, as opinion polls suggest. They fear political drift that will hobble efforts to stabilise Italy’s fragile banking sector. Those risks are real, but a defeat for Mr Renzi might be a blessing in disguise."