Meet "Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old radical leftist who has campaigned on renegotiating Greece’s debt deal." His political party: Syriza—The Coalition of the Radical Left.
Just outside Tsipras’s office hangs a photograph of a crowd celebrating the 1959 Cuban revolution; elsewhere, the hammer and sickle is a common sight."
Good Lord.
But, maybe he's less an ideologue than I fear he is (albeit an ideologue nonetheless, I'd wager)....
Tsipras entered politics at the age of 15, when a group of older students...recruited him into the pro-Soviet communist party. “Greek politicians very often shout, scream, but he was never like that,” recalls Panos Papadopoulos, one of his recruiters. “He was always very calm, making his arguments, without being an exhibitionist.” [S]ays Matthaios Tsimitakis, another student.... “But he had this realism, that politics is among other things negotiation and finding the best compromise.”
.....
Those who remember him from this time recall an able speaker, but one more interested in tactics than ideology.
via www.businessweek.com
Then there's Peru's president, Humala.
On June 6, 2011, the Lima Stock Exchange fell 12 percent, its biggest drop ever, as investors reacted to the election of Ollanta Humala as president the day before. Affluent Peruvians feared the ex-officer and one-time ally of Hugo Chávez would take Peru down the same path of nationalizations as practiced in Venezuela. A year has passed. Peru has the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. The stock market is up almost 8 percent. Foreign investment is pouring in. What happened to the next Chávez? Even before his election, Humala had shelved his most radical proposals, such as obliging private pension holders to pay into a state retirement plan or rewriting the constitution to boost the role of the state in the economy. Humala has dispelled most investors’ doubts about his pragmatism.
But.... "Humala’s toughest tests lie before him. Peru’s 61 percent rural poverty rate may lead to increased calls for redistribution of wealth, Bank of America (BAC) said in a May 4 report."
Then there's the best news yet, about the undoubtedly clever, but nonetheless bloviating, bully Hugo Chavez:
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "days are numbered" economically and politically and that the region should prepare to move into a new era of democracy on his eventual exit.
By the way, Zoellick had some good advice in general, too:
"Many developing economies make early rapid gains. But then productivity and growth tend to slow. Many Latin American countries will need to translate the commodity boom into broader, more diversified economies. This region has lived through roller-coaster booms and busts before."
But then there's France:
France intends to lower the legal retirement age from 62 to 60 for a small class of workers, the government announced Wednesday, maintaining a campaign pledge by the newly elected president, the Socialist François Hollande, and partly undoing a major change by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979), was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (the husband of Elizabeth II). He was the last Viceroy of India (1947) and the first Governor-General of the independent Union of India (1947–48), from which the modern Republic of India would emerge in 1950. From 1954 until 1959 he was the First Sea Lord, a position that had been held by his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, some forty years earlier. Thereafter he served as Chief of the Defence Staff until 1965, making him the longest serving professional head of the British Armed Forces to date. During this period Mountbatten also served as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee for a year.
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