Source: www.zerohedge.com - Sunday, October 25, 2015 On Thursday evening, we took a close look at how the political landscape has changed in Portugal following inconclusive elections held earlier this month. For those unaware, the worry in Brussels has always been that either Spain, Portugal or, in a less likely scenario, Italy, would go the way of Greece by electing politicians that would seek to roll back austerity, shun fiscal rectitude, and demand debt relief. As we’ve noted on any number of occasions over the past nine months, that’s why Berlin adopted such a hardline approach to negotiations with Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis. There was never any hope of setting Athens on a “sustainable path.” It was always about deterring more “meaningful” states from going the Syriza route. Well as it turns out, the troika’s efforts to subvert the democratic process in Greece by using the purse string to overthrow the government apparently did not deter the Portuguese leftists. Put differently, the ATM lines, empty shelves, and gas station queues Greece witnessed over the summer have not had their intended psychological effect in Portugal as Socialist leader Antonio Costa announced earlier in the week that he’s prepared to align with the Communists and with Left Bloc to form a government in defiance of the Right-wing coalition. The Left alliance would have an absolute majority in parliament and would likely adopt an anti-austerity, and perhaps even an anti-euro, platform. In an eff All Related
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