After barely a week following the Greek elections and Syriza’s victory, negotiations between the EU’s “Troika” of debt collectors — the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB), and the European Commission (EUC) — and Syriza’s representatives have already begun to intensify.

Even before the elections and Syriza’s victory, threats were flowing from the Troika warning Syriza to abandon its demand that the Troika write off up to one-third of Greece’s 317 billion euro debt; that it continue with the Troika’s previously imposed debt payment structure agreed to by Syriza’s predecessor government; and that austerity programs continue to be implemented regardless of the hardship imposed on the Greek people after five years of economic depression.

The Troika are desperate. The northern European bondholders, investors, central bankers, and Euro bureaucrats that are the true faces behind the Troika, whose policies directly represent their interests, are confronted by a serious democratic challenge by the new Greece and Syriza government. A challenge that could spread like political wildfire throughout Europe if not contained.

That democratic challenge comes at a time when the Eurozone economy continues to weaken, deflation has set in, more northern and eastern European economies are slipping into recession, bond rates and yields are turning negative throughout the EU, currency instability is rising, USA demanded sanctions on Russia are biting deep into Euro business profit margins, the Ukraine is in economic collapse and demanding billions more in IMF and EC bailouts, and the war in Ukraine is intensifying again. Not a small short list of major problems, by any means.