Greece / eurozone: election sideshow It used to be Brussels that bought the eurozone time, with all those extemporising bailouts. Now it is the turn of Athens. The weekend election result has given proponents of Greece's current path of savage austerity a final opportunity to prove that it can work. The country will remain in the eurozone while that exercise continues. But one thing at least has changed: the election has rendered Greece a sideshow in the eurozone crisis. The real action, unhappily, is elsewhere. True, the election outcome sent the bombed-out share prices of Greek companies soaring; National Bank of Greece was up 17 per cent and lottery operator OPAP 9 per cent. But investors may have fretted too much ahead of the election. The most worrying number on Monday came not from Greece but Spain: the yield on its 10-year bonds rose above 7 per cent again. This month's €100bn bailout for Spain's second-tier banks is proving a red herring. As investors fret that Spain itself may need international financial assistance, it is clear that the eurozone has bigger problems than who governs - for whatever length of time - in Athens. The danger is that the temporary relief rally witnessed on Monday, including a rise in the euro, sends the wrong message to policy makers. Two big issues remain. Greece's new government needs to find €11bn of cuts by the end of June if it is to secure another tranche of its second bailout. If it cannot do that, it is unlikely that Germany will agree to soften the bailout's terms. If that does not happen, another election appears a certainty within months. The larger task is to secure the viability of the euro, regardless of whether Greece remains part of the eurozone. The country's outsized problems have obscured this critical reality. Now that the Greeks have voted to give themselves a stay of execution, investors should keep their eyes on the bigger picture.