It’s not just Bitcoin that’s in a tailspin on Friday.
Spanish stocks nosedived at the open after three separatist groups won a combined 70 seats out of 135 in the regional parliament in Thursday’s closely-watched snap election. That restores the majority they lost back in October when Rajoy invoked Article 155 in an effort to get rid of the treasonous bastards pushing for independence.
(The Guardian)
Here’s the IBEX:
“As Catalan president I wish to congratulate people for delivering an indisputable result,” the deposed Carles Puigdemont said from Brussels. “We have won this election in exceptional circumstances, with candidates in prison, with the government in exile and without having the same resources as the state,” he added.
Turnout was a whopping 80% and ultimately, this is a mess. For one thing, it’s not clear what exactly Puigdemont can accomplish from exile even as Junts Per Catalunya cemented its standing as the largest separatist force.
While Ciudadanos won the most votes, other unionist parties (including Rajoy’s People’s Party), might as well have not showed up.
“It’s a bitter victory,” Paloma Morales, a 27-year-old student at a Ciudadanos rally told Reuters, adding that this “means four more years of misery.”
I guess that depends on one’s perspective. Pro-independence voters waved Catalan flags and chanted “President Puigdemont!”, so they’re not “miserable”.
One thing this definitely means is more uncertainty for the EU as this will invariably embolden other independence movements (again), and this just underscores the notion that Rajoy is doing a piss poor job of handling this situation.
The euro got hit but has reversed some of its losses:
“The Catalan news probably was taken as excuse to sell the euro,” Jun Kato, a senior fund manager at Shinkin Asset Management Co. in Tokyo told Bloomberg overnight, adding that the single currency is “facing profit taking as trading slows in holiday season and toward year-end as the current levels are elevated.”
CaixaBank and Banco de Sabadell are getting drilled:
So you know, all in all just another day in the European Union, which seems doomed to exist under the perpetual threat of dissolution by virtue of the fact that the contingent of politicians who are sane are also hopelessly inept, while the people who are insane seem unnervingly adept at rallying the masses around fruitless “causes” with no tangible upside whatsoever (think: Brexit).
Why do you think the reassertion of a nation’s sovereignty is a fruitless cause? It seems pretty important to me. And given the history since the financial crisis, notably the significant expansion in income and wealth inequality seen in the developed markets, it seems a natural response would be for those people who have lagged in the period want to reassert themselves. The best way to do that is via reassertion of their own sovereignty. Does it really make sense that Portugal and Poland are in more than a trading club?
this will be ruinous for Catalonia. these pretensions to nationalism and faux populism are the worst kind of bullshit. there is no rolling back the clock on global integration. it’s a road to the dark ages. Jack Ma is exactly right to say that the world’s problems largely stem for not enough integration. “sovereignty” is crap. we’re a planet of people, not nation states. if we don’t come to terms with that, we won’t make it.