Saturday, May 08, 2010

Grecian Implications: Cue The Coup?

From one of the eminent sociologists at Crooked Timber:

Just about every article in this morning’s Financial Times seems to include a paragraph or two about how governments need to “deliver” debt reduction, to satisfy the markets, investor expectations etc. They then typically note that said investors are anxious about whether democratic politicians can “deliver” the austerity measures that the markets “require”. So here’s the question: how long before the Economist, the Murdoch press and similar give up on democracy on the grounds of its incapacity to “deliver” firm government?

[...]

My guess is that we’ll be reading op-eds pretty soon that raise the spectre of “ungovernability” and espouse “temporary” authoritarian solutions. Maybe such columns are already being written? Feel free to provide examples in comments.


My guess is we won't, because Rush and Glen and Co. would never advocate sending the U.S. army into the old Confederacy, and that's what this kind of thing would imply if applied to mainland U.S.A. Of course, if its only Greece or Latvia we're talking about, then maybe. Folks tend to be less sensitive about some other citizenry getting a whiff of grapeshot in the name of financial stability.

As always with CT, the comments are very good, representing all facets of the American and International Left from its fairly reasonable to fairly foamy wings.

1 comment:

Metro said...

Actually I have to interject that the Economist is actually a big defender of democracy.

Admittedly they like democracy because it tends to accomodate the free market, but they do like it.

Besides, it'd be more subtle. Harper, by doing stuff that's illegal but unopposed in any meaningful sense, has stretched the boundaries and dragged the Overton window off to Geo. W. Bush territory. From which one can argue for state-sponsored-almost-anything.