Where have you been? Fini and Bersani, De Benedetti and Tronchetti, D'Alema and Prodi, Berlusconi and Geronzi, Tremorti and Visco, Bossi and Casini, Marcegaglia and Benetton while day after day, Italy has been plundered of its wealth and of its future? And by how much has your personal fortune grown in the last ten years? You who are the ones explaining the economy to us in the newspapers and on TV? While you and your peers have been living it up for ten years at the expense of the country, Italy has been going down. Growth has been subject to a heart attack. From 2000, according to research given in the daily paper El Pais, out of 180 nations only Haiti has done worse than Italy. The whole world has developed more than we have apart from Haiti, one of the poorest countries devastated by an apocalyptic earthquake.
From 2000 to 2010 there have been alternate governments on the left and on the right, and at the head of the Confindustria and the banking system all the ones who are responsible for our decline that by now is irreversible for at least a generation. We are the worse ones on the planet, not just worse than Burkina Faso in position 44, or than Montenegro at position 115. All without distinction, have done better than us, apart from an island in the Caribbean. The moment has come to declare the collapse of a governing class, the worst one in the last 150 years, without exception, taking no prisoners. Collusion even more than corruption has been the dark evil that has infected the body of the country. The best have got by with handsome golden handshakes or with prestigious honorary roles. The worst have devoured the economy in common agreement, from the selling off of Telecom, to the Alitalia disaster, to the funeral rites of Italtel and Olivetti.
A public debt that is ever greater is knocking on our doors with hundreds of billions of euro to be placed at the beginning of 2011 if there is to be no default. It’s not a matter of being alarmists, but realists looking at the face of reality. The debt will be at 1900 billion within a few months. However, the debt cannot grow forever. It’s inevitable that there’s a point of no return. The debt has been growing while the economy has been static for an eternity. The sick ones of Europe, the so-called PIGS, have developed more than us in the last ten years. Ireland is at position 131, Greece at position 132 and Portugal 178, just one position above us is on the edge of the abyss.

Portugal and Ireland are following the same trajectory as Greece, in order to sell their shares they have to pay ever more interest to justify the investment risk. However Italy is optimistic, even with the worst growth in the world and the biggest public debt in Europe, it’s always in denial, it always denies. And it will be like that right up to the end. The Tremorti Mystery. Into the catastrophe with optimism.
El Pais rankings showing growth 2000-2010 – as given in Italiafutura:
positions 1 to 73, pdf
positions 74 to 180, pdf
(reworked from data given by the International Monetary Fund – IMF, pdf)