Leaders elected by the markets

SO Greece has a new prime minister — Lucas Papademos — and Italy looks to have a new one, too — Mario Monti.

To which not just you and I, but most Italians and Greeks respond, “Who?”

Neither Papademos nor Monti has ever held elective office, or even run for one.

Neither has been a minister, sub-minister or even civil servant in one of their nation’s ministries.

Neither has developed, or sought to develop, a public following from their careers as economic technicians, chiefly on the European supra-national level. Yet each is about to lead a major nation.

Papademos and Monti are something new under the sun: national leaders elected by the markets, and imposed by the European banking community, by the finance ministers of the eurozone powers — chiefly, Germany and France. Each has an impressive resume and a good reputation with the centrist political and economic elite of his own nation, but there’s no reason why the person on the streets of Rome or Athens should know who the hell they are.

But imagine if the US couldn’t sell its treasury notes (which has never been a problem, let’s be clear), and the IMF and Germany and China got together and said that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, the Cabinet and the Congress had to go. Imagine that they then designated as Obama’s successor, say, the guy who followed Tim Geithner as head of the New York Fed (I don’t even know who that is), or Robert Zoellick, the American who heads the World Bank.

That’s essentially what just happened to Italy and Greece.

Paul Doran

Monastery Walk

Clondalkin

Dublin 22