>>99297 Didn't he call the election because after the EU results it was clear he'd lost the support of the country and he wasn't interested in squatting in power like our lot often do? Cameron thought he was going to win the referendum, so no.
I think most people assumed he'd called the election to lose but then have the far-right show themselves as unable to govern ahead of the much more important presidential election. So it's more like a Brexit where Cameron was only pretending to be thick.
But yes, I moved my silly billy European investments to OMX last week before they get painfully hilarious on Monday.
>I think most people assumed he'd called the election to lose but then have the far-right show themselves as unable to govern ahead of the much more important presidential election.
It was a bit needless to call the election now. The last one was just two years ago. And to now stake your entire political career on making a statement following the less than ideal European elections was kind of reckless. With Brexit, polls were always tight enough to give Cameron an almost even chance of his gamble succeeding. But Macron knew that he'd fallen into very clear disfavour in recent opinion polls. I'm not sure what beset him to think that people would end up voting vastly different on the day.
>But yes, I moved my silly billy European investments to OMX last week before they get painfully hilarious on Monday.
The CAC has shed over seven percent the last few weeks in the run-up to today. That's a lot for an entire index in a Western European country. And again, those opinion polls left little room for surprises. I'm more inclined to think that after a brief shock, the CAC will actually rise.
I'm kicking myself for buying Airbus shares last week, given that they've tanked almost 15 percent. But I'm sure most of it is priced in now. Both for Airbus and other CAC 40 components.
At least at the moment, it's not looking that bad for tomorrow. Buy the bad news, I guess. And the biggest possible disaster, a 50+ percent majority for the far right, has been averted. That could arguably have rattled markets.
I'm not going to say I knew this would happen, because with stocks, you just never know. I took a gamble by keeping Airbus, same as you did by moving your cash into OMX.
I guess my theory was right that much worse had been priced in. Granted, an absolute majority for the far right would have further complicated things and maybe sent the CAC down a few percent more. But now here we are. Macron has lost his gamble, not entirely dissimilar to Cameron, but the far right still has no hope of becoming part of the (next) government. There is going to be a lot of negotiating taking place, with each party having to water down their agenda, which means there will be no drastic policy changes. Which is ultimately good for the stock market.
Are the far left not scarier than the far right, so far as share prices are concerned?
I keep seeing snippets of editorials and the like from economic observers and papers going "Of course, the far right are very bad indeed... but the NFP have an economic program of clobbering our precious wealth creators, which would be much more destabilising than the opportunist policies of RN, so regrettably..."
What matters is that there's a hung parliament. No one party can rule. The left same as the far right.
Because Le Pen's party is the smelly kid in the playground, nobody will go together with them. The smaller parties will have to form a coalition government where all of them will have to be ready for compromise. Even the Left.
>>99368 Well, then that brings me onto the next point which is all you investment lads do is go "ah, a -0.15% drop, but I'm in it for the long haul", so is it? I'm not sure that's worth crossing your fingers and hoping France reinstates the Milice.
Well, well, well, it seems moving my money to OMX wasn't such a bad move after all. Apparently the bond markets were already looking grim at the end of the reform era with a lot of bankruptcies on the horizon. I think the hope was that the RN would just be enough Brothers of Italy but now look at it.
Unfortunately I also rotated out of Taiwan and back into the continent. Oh how the wheel of fortuna spins.
>>99315 Their implicit mission is to bring French politics back to the 1930s so yes, it could get pretty dysfunctional. Especially as they want to now bring in 15 days of emergency legislation to rise the minimum wage by 14%, introduce price caps, delete all of Macron's reform and raise France's already eye-watering tax burden.
Even if you want to argue that their policies are sound, they are pushing for a radical pace of very disruptive changes from the position of a rainbow coalition.
Alright, investment boys, that's two crushing left-wing victories in one week; up against the wall and I don't want any moaning, the people have spoken.
>>99575 >Do you want private investment or not?
You know what I fancy right now, a kebab? Will you go down and get me a kebab?
>>99577 I'm assuming it was some match winner headed in to win one of the games in the Euros. Crossed in from the left, back of the net, crushing victory.
>You know what I fancy right now, a kebab? Will you go down and get me a kebab?
You couldn't get a kebab without private investment.
So... a French Reich averted, eh. Not sure to what extent you can say that Macron's gamble has paid off. Obviously the second vote yesterday weakened the far right, but at the same time the whole thing hasn't been without great damage to Macron's own standing.
It’s a truly abysmal democratic system they have in France, but you can’t deny it’s great for getting everyone to vote against a party they all hate. How many times have the Le Pen family been blocked at the final hurdle now?
Le Pen got 37% of the votes (more than Labour to win here). Now you'll have a shit coalition government that will only make things worse, with Le Pen free from any blame. They have been gaining and this is their best result yet. Wars are long term, battles are short.
Like labour, the centre/left are increasingly winning on technicalities. Unless a miracle of common sense happens (immigration control like Denmark's left), the actual right are probably going win in the next 10 years.
>Like labour, the centre/left are increasingly winning on technicalities. Unless a miracle of common sense happens (immigration control like Denmark's left), the actual right are probably going win in the next 10 years.
Among the wider population, the Right aren't profiting from being genuinely the better political parties. In many countries across Europe, the main reason for their growing popularity is that the traditional democratic parties have fucked up. At least in the people's perception.
I'm disinterested in the immigration issue myself, I don't perceive it as a big problem, having spent a few years living in an inner-city immigrant neighbourhood where different nationalities never bothered me. But to a lot of people, those parties and governments have simply let in too many foreigners the last ten years, both legally and illegally. Add to that a recurringly shaky economy, and you'll have people following the Pied Piper of right-wing parties who wouldn't normally call themselves right wing.
My mum had a friend who was a lifelong Labour member, who was from a working class family and left school at 16, and spent her whole working life working in a home for the elderly. For as long as I could remember, she was dyed in the wool Labour. At some point even active for them at the local level. Now that she's retired and on a meagre pension and struggling to keep her house, her views have shifted dramatically, to where she voted UKIP in the last election.
The lesson from 1930s Europe has always been that when people lose faith in the political system, they become susceptible to political messages from the extreme ends of the spectrum. It's not entirely the fault of those right-wing parties; the failure of established democratic political parties is just as much to blame. That is still true today.
