MNeagle
20th February 2011, 03:21 PM
"Massive Collapse" For Angela Merkel Following Today's Hamburg Election As Germans "Just Say No" To More European Bail Outs
As the results of the first of seven German regional elections hits the wire, the German people are heard loud and clear: "no more bail outs." The outcome of the Hamburg election is nothing short of a disaster for Angela Merkel and her ruling (for now) CDU party. Bloomberg reports that "Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party lost control of Hamburg, Germany’s richest state, in the first of seven state votes this year that threaten to limit her scope to respond to Europe’s debt crisis, television projections show." Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union took 20.8 percent in today’s election, its worst result in the port city since at least World War II, ARD television projections showed. The Social Democrats, the main national opposition party, took 49.8 percent, enough to end the CDU’s 10-year rule in Hamburg and form a majority government without need of a coalition partner. The CDU suffered “a massive collapse of support in this booming city that must set off hand-wringing in Berlin,” said Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, managing director of Hamburg-based pollster Psephos. “Merkel will surely be concerned now that this disaster won’t be repeated in upcoming state elections.” To their great chagrin, the young participants on the FRBNY's OMO desk will have to be absent from their President's Day NYU mixers overnight as they are urgently needed by JC Trichet: the reason - buying up every single Portuguese bond as soon as the market opens tomorrow: "There’s a risk to peripheral bonds if Germany is seen not to be displaying support for the countries that are in trouble,” said Orlando Green, assistant director of capital- markets strategy at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment bank in London. “The market would have been hoping that a deal would have been struck already” before the elections." And while German people are just modestly more civilized than their North African peers, what has happened in Germany is nothing short of a revolution to the existing status quo. The attempt to cover up European bail outs with endless rhetoric is over. If Merkel continues the course she is on, she is history... and she knows it too well. Time to be less than bullish on the EUR's prospects.
From Bloomberg:
The CDU took less than half its tally at the last Hamburg election three years ago. The results are “painful” for the CDU, Mayor Christoph Ahlhaus said in comments broadcast live, congratulating his Social Democratic opponent Olaf Scholz, a former Labor Minister in Merkel’s first-term government.
“It’s a warning to Merkel,” said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Groep NV in Brussels. “If she has to draw any lesson, it probably will be to get tougher at the European level to show something to German voters,” he said. “There is no room for Merkel to come home from Brussels on March 25 with anything that could look or smell like a defeat.”
As Zero Hedge pointed out two weeks ago, and as was widely ignored by the FX markets, the European forward calendar in the cruellest month of March will be a blast...alas, not in the party sense.
more: link (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/massive-collapse-angela-merkel-following-todays-hamburg-election-germans-just-say-no-more-eu?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedg e+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+fo r+everyone+drops+to+zero%29)
As the results of the first of seven German regional elections hits the wire, the German people are heard loud and clear: "no more bail outs." The outcome of the Hamburg election is nothing short of a disaster for Angela Merkel and her ruling (for now) CDU party. Bloomberg reports that "Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party lost control of Hamburg, Germany’s richest state, in the first of seven state votes this year that threaten to limit her scope to respond to Europe’s debt crisis, television projections show." Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union took 20.8 percent in today’s election, its worst result in the port city since at least World War II, ARD television projections showed. The Social Democrats, the main national opposition party, took 49.8 percent, enough to end the CDU’s 10-year rule in Hamburg and form a majority government without need of a coalition partner. The CDU suffered “a massive collapse of support in this booming city that must set off hand-wringing in Berlin,” said Hans-Juergen Hoffmann, managing director of Hamburg-based pollster Psephos. “Merkel will surely be concerned now that this disaster won’t be repeated in upcoming state elections.” To their great chagrin, the young participants on the FRBNY's OMO desk will have to be absent from their President's Day NYU mixers overnight as they are urgently needed by JC Trichet: the reason - buying up every single Portuguese bond as soon as the market opens tomorrow: "There’s a risk to peripheral bonds if Germany is seen not to be displaying support for the countries that are in trouble,” said Orlando Green, assistant director of capital- markets strategy at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment bank in London. “The market would have been hoping that a deal would have been struck already” before the elections." And while German people are just modestly more civilized than their North African peers, what has happened in Germany is nothing short of a revolution to the existing status quo. The attempt to cover up European bail outs with endless rhetoric is over. If Merkel continues the course she is on, she is history... and she knows it too well. Time to be less than bullish on the EUR's prospects.
From Bloomberg:
The CDU took less than half its tally at the last Hamburg election three years ago. The results are “painful” for the CDU, Mayor Christoph Ahlhaus said in comments broadcast live, congratulating his Social Democratic opponent Olaf Scholz, a former Labor Minister in Merkel’s first-term government.
“It’s a warning to Merkel,” said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Groep NV in Brussels. “If she has to draw any lesson, it probably will be to get tougher at the European level to show something to German voters,” he said. “There is no room for Merkel to come home from Brussels on March 25 with anything that could look or smell like a defeat.”
As Zero Hedge pointed out two weeks ago, and as was widely ignored by the FX markets, the European forward calendar in the cruellest month of March will be a blast...alas, not in the party sense.
more: link (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/massive-collapse-angela-merkel-following-todays-hamburg-election-germans-just-say-no-more-eu?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedg e+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+fo r+everyone+drops+to+zero%29)