Incoming wall of text:

Right so over the last fourteen years there has been no government in Holland that has been able to function it's full four year term. This one was never going to be different, it was more a question of when then if this was going to happen. The main reason for this is that Dutch governments are always coalitions from multiple political parties.

The existence of all these parties (19 parties were on the ballot the last election) has fractured the political spectrum, and the biggest party usually ends up with 1/3 to 2/5 of the votes and as such seats in the House of Representatives. The smallest parties usually end up with two or three seats (examples are the Animal party and the christian fundamentalist parties). Fun fact: there also was an attempt to create a pedo party a few years back.

So after each election the winner (the party with the most votes) will enter into negotiations with other parties to see if they can form a coalition that will have a majority. The number of parties involved in these coalitions often depends on how the votes are distributed over all the parties. Sometimes they are two party coalitions and sometimes they need four parties.

During the last elections (June 201) the liberal party ended up being the biggest (beating the socialists by a margin of one seat) so they were the ones who were asked by the queen to start forming a coalition. The biggest winner of these elections was the freedom party who are a somewhat populist party, with populist issues (less immigration, anti-EU, pro Israel, etc). They did become the third largest party though, and as such could not really be ignored.

The vote distribution ruled out a two party coalition as there were no two parties that would get a majority. Of the four possible three party coalitions, three were not possible because the main socialist party ruled out working with the freedom party, and ruled out working with both the Cristian democrats and the liberals. The last possible option would see the liberals ruling together with the freedom party and the CD. Neither the Libs nor the CD were too eager on that though. So what was decided after 127 days of negotiating was to form a minority government consisting of the liberals and the Cristian democrats, which would be supported by the freedom party. The freedom party would not be part of the government however.

This happened and was all great for a while until about eight weeks ago when it became clear that more austerity measures were needed to adhere to the 3% rule from Brussels. The three parties went back into negotiations to see where/what should be cut for that. Last Friday the freedom party walked out of these negotiations and at the same time decided to no longer support the government. The main reason for this was that they felt that the proposed austerity measures were to harsh on the pensioners and he felt that Holland was 'bending it's knee to Brussels'. With their majority gone the government had no alternatives to offer their resignation to the queen.

The elections are in September to give new political parties enough time to prepare for them. It's one of the fun things with having so many political parties. Every election there will be a couple of new flavors. Doing it before the summer holidays would disadvantage them too much against the existing parties.

that makes more sense i guess
in the uk since we have first past the post it doesn't rly matter because small parties have no chance anyway, irrespective of how much prep time they have lmao

What a clusterfuck, and we complain about having 2 big mainstream parties that serve us the same soup no matter what lol

except when Hollande is close to winning the French stock market plunged and everyone is looking nervously at Europe and getting ready 2 ship off their monies to faraway lands so idk if I'd call them 2 parties that r the same.

(because one of them is actually batshit insaney-er than Sarkozy)

I thought Aus had first past the post? Anyway small parties here are starting to slowly make a big impact.

Last election labor had to make a coalition with the greens which will be the main reason that labor gets kicked out next election if they do. Labor made a promise of having no carbon tax. Greens wanted it. Labor was forced to join with greens.... guess who had to pass a carbon tax lol. Also who got control of the country last election came down to quite literally 3 independents and who they decided to join with.

Or maybe it plunges because we're insolvent, our banks are broke (as in they are levered 30x and have run out of shitty collaterals to get ECB loans) and we're already in recession. Just sayin'

If France was is a good shape markets wouldn't plunge so blaming it on a possible election outcome and possible policies that would follow is just plain stupid.

Why France is in bad shape is mostly because the right has the power since 10 years and while effectively cutting state employment, they spent much more than what they spared in wars, bailouts, fiscal presents to their rich friends and shit. A lot like Amerikkka.



Sarko is responsible for 500-600 billions more debt during his reign, if cutting on state employment is the right thing to do, where did that fucking money go I ask you? We should have reduced our debt, right?

Hollande wants to spend on state employment which sounds insane atm for outsiders and people that have a short view of how things work. Sarko spent much more, quietly, for banks and multinationals bailouts, add to that massive fiscal advantages to the very rich people and companies, while silently dismantling what makes France one of the best countries in the world to live, its public hospitals, schools, libraries etc. thus producing more unemployment. And we know how unemployed people contribute to economic growth right?

That the market reacts badly to the possibilty that they won't get bailed out as much, and that multinationals may not get all what they want, education, health etc. is surprising to you?

Mr average frenchman just thinks : reducing state employment doesn't work, in fact it has worsen our educational system, health system, and produced more unemployment while our debt is still skyrocketing. The privatized markets are handled to multinationals anyway who employ people in india, have their money on little safe islands and don't pay taxes here, no benefits for France itself. Wrong way, get out while it's still time. I'd rather have my taxes used to get more teachers in public schools (atm they handle 40-50 pupils each, was 25-30 ten years ago) than for a Credit Agricole bailout, war in Lybia or a new rolex for Mr President (don't forget we are all aware here how he put a 25.000 Euros coffee machine in his Air Sarko 1 plane, along with 75.000 Euros pizza hovens, all with public money, and the list goes on and on and on and on)

Would you rather have 100k state employees contributing to the welfare and economy of the state, especially teachers who are of utmost important for the future, or 100k unemployed depressive alcohoolics? What costs more at the end of the day? It has to be balanced for sure, a state cannot employ all the nation's people but going full liberal (privatize everything) simply does not work and is based on lies and distorted, simplistic maths that only benefits to stateless people/capitals, aka mondialist vampires. That is the public perception based on last 10 years mismanagement. It's bad because ultimately people don't understand we need to reduce the state's weight in our economy, but who can blame them when all they see is that the money supposedly spared is spent 3x on bullshit that always go to the .001% elsewhere?

At this point the Sarko/Hollande debate is pretty pointless anyway imho. Sarko or Hollande, either will get burned by the incoming borrowing rates explosion / massive bailouts needed for Spain and we'll either get an IMF/GS technocrat apointed to get the job done ala Greece/Italy (reimburse the big sharks first, even if that means completely screwing the little people) or a revolution.

Btw Sarko and Hollande might not look the same from an outsider point of view, but they are just two faces of a corrupt system that has denied us the right to print our own money, and is happy to print at convenience for themselves and their friends while the little people are having a hard time to understand why the price of noodles tripled in 5 years while their salary only grew by 5% and why the ECB lends trillions to banks at 1% while we must borrow from markets at 3-4, and soon 6-7%. None of the candidates except Marine Le Pen mentions this "detail", ever. That's called maintaining the Status Quo. The people better not know/really understand where the money they get for their hard work comes from, and what the people who have the printer are doing with it or it will be a shitstorm.

Ah but the eurozone with its unreasonable deficit criteria thinks that real goods and services should not be produced - even though both materials and potential workers are available, "there is no money" so nothing will happen lol. It is nonsense that a social construct has come to dictate the creation of actual value. And the countries have no control over the money because they are not the issuers of it, so thus the downward spiral flows.. spending cuts -> less private income -> less sales -> destroyed jobs -> repeat.

Regarding jobs, to some extent i would say that in the event of real necessity, a state can employ everyone who is willing to work ("job guarantee" is a good search term), in fact i think it should because it provides labour for stuff like infrastructure upgrades and also provides a basic income to those who need it. There is always stuff that needs to be done, might as well put people to work. After all, the unemployed are factually in the public sector just as they would be as JG workers - the difference being that when unemployed, they are 1) not producing anything but still consuming stuff; 2) not boosting overall sales etc in the economy because of fail income.

Nah australia uses preferential voting and the fact that voting is also compulsory means that a lot of people lodge protest votes since they have to go anyway (or spoil their ballot, whatever)

good posts from halarach & otter, i completely agree. the current economic system, neoliberalism, is completely unsustainable... the only question is what will come next? and literally no mainstream politician is brave enough to broach that topic.