The only saving grace of the earlier horrendous Greek parliamentary vote was that, based on very preliminary results New Democracy and Pasok would be able to form a coalition government with precisely 151 seats needed in parliament to give them status quo powers. However, according to a more recent re-rack of the votes (New Democracy 18.9%, 108 seats, Pasok 13.4%, 41 seats, Syrizia: 16.6%, 51 seats, and all others), this assumption is now in jeopardy as the two pro-bailout parties will have just 149 seats in the new parliament, or not even a full majority. Why is this problematic? Because virtually every other party in the new parliament, and there may be up to 10 there including the New Dawn, have voiced their opposition to the bailout of Greece, which as everyone knows is merely a bailout of Europe's insolvent banks using Greek taxpayer funds as a conduit. And, adding insult to injury, Reuters now reports [5]that "Greek leftist leader calls for anti-bailout coalition." It appears that finally, after many years of delays, the anti "bailout" genie is finally out of bottle...
From Reuters [5]:
Greece's Left Coalition called on Sunday for an anti-bailout coalition, saying the country's general election showed that austerity policies had been soundly defeated and a peaceful revolution ushered in.
The Communist KKE - which believes Greece should abandon the euro - immediately rejected Tsipras's call for a leftist alliance.
"Mrs Merkel needs to understand that austerity policies have suffered a huge defeat," said Left Coalition leader Alexis Tsipras, referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"With their vote, Greek people gave a mandate for a new dawn in our country with solidarity and justice instead of barbaric bailout measures."
Tsipras' party has emerged as the surprise star of the election and is on track to finish in second place with 16 percent of the vote, according to early results. The success comes at the expense of the big pro-bailout parties, New Democracy and PASOK, who were punished for backing austerity.
The KKE are projected to take about 8.5 percent of the vote.
"The parties which signed the bailouts without Greek people's consent are now a minority," Tsipras said.
Watch for this Greek development to metastasize to all other PIIGS countries. Europe's bankers better pray that Draghi, with Goldman and the Fed's blessing of course, announces some form of monetary intervention soon or things will get ugly.