:
:
:
:
:
:
:

The economist is off the mark.

It's not just one man screwing a whole country..... and I have been stating this concept here for over a year so here goes with a refresher course in who is fucking who.....

[refrain] .....

Whilst one italian in two fucks one italian in two
and the third italian waits idly on to see if he can then fuck the winner, .... we are still waiting for the fourth italian to come forth and save the Italy.

BUT !!!!
In the last 3 weeks big changes have happened.

Now we have: ...

... one of the two italians in two italians who used to be fucked
by one in two italians has gotten fed up and simply said NO!
[ or 'yes' if we are taking the referendum into account ]

Hence we now have one in two italians fucking himself ...
... assholes such as: Santache, Vespa, Sgarbi, Lupi, Belpietro, Feltri, Ferrara etc.
[ Berlusconi is the boss of self buggery so he is obviously included ]

... and so ... the other Italian who is no longer playing the game of letting himself be fucked by the other italian - is now fucking back those italians who are self-fucking themselves.

Hence we have a situation of a double fuck.

Berlusconi and his regime just open their stupid dogmatic gobs and hence fuck themselves with no need of help from elsewhere, but now they are also being fucked by the ex-fucked italians too.

What a shame that the italian economy is also fucked, and people will be weary of throwing two euro coins at these regime shitheads when they decide to make a hasty exit.

Nevermind - even an old 50 Lira coin will do.

Please aim straight.

Keyser Soze

:
:
:
:
:
:
:

Dall'Economist di questa settimana...

The man who screwed an entire country

The Berlusconi era will haunt Italy for years to come

SILVIO BERLUSCONI has a lot to smile about. In his 74 years, he has created a media empire that made him Italy’s richest man. He has dominated politics since 1994 and is now Italy’s longest-serving prime minister since Mussolini. He has survived countless forecasts of his imminent departure. Yet despite his personal successes, he has been a disaster as a national leader—in three ways.

Two of them are well known. The first is the lurid saga of his “Bunga Bunga” sex parties, one of which has led to the unedifying spectacle of a prime minister being put on trial in Milan on charges of paying for sex with a minor. The Rubygate trial has besmirched not just Mr Berlusconi, but also his country.

However shameful the sexual scandal has been, its impact on Mr Berlusconi’s performance as a politician has been limited, so this newspaper has largely ignored it. We have, however, long protested about his second failing: his financial shenanigans. Over the years, he has been tried more than a dozen times for fraud, false accounting or bribery. His defenders claim that he has never been convicted, but this is untrue. Several cases have seen convictions, only for them to be set aside because the convoluted proceedings led to trials being timed out by a statute of limitations—at least twice because Mr Berlusconi himself changed the law. That was why this newspaper argued in April 2001 that he was unfit to lead Italy.
Related items

* Oh for a new risorgimentoJun 9th 2011

Related topics

* Public finance
* Europe
* Italy
* European politics
* Government and politics

We have seen no reason to change that verdict. But it is now clear that neither the dodgy sex nor the dubious business history should be the main reason for Italians looking back on Mr Berlusconi as a disastrous, even malign, failure. Worst by far has been a third defect: his total disregard for the economic condition of his country. Perhaps because of the distraction of his legal tangles, he has failed in almost nine years as prime minister to remedy or even really to acknowledge Italy’s grave economic weaknesses. As a result, he will leave behind him a country in dire straits.

A chronic disease, not an acute one

That grim conclusion might surprise students of the euro crisis. Thanks to the tight fiscal policy of Mr Berlusconi’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, Italy has so far escaped the markets’ wrath. Ireland, not Italy, is the I in the PIGS (with Portugal, Greece and Spain). Italy avoided a housing bubble; its banks did not go bust. Employment held up: the unemployment rate is 8%, compared with over 20% in Spain. The budget deficit in 2011 will be 4% of GDP, against 6% in France.

Yet these reassuring numbers are deceptive. Italy’s economic illness is not the acute sort, but a chronic disease that slowly gnaws away at vitality. When Europe’s economies shrink, Italy’s shrinks more; when they grow, it grows less. As our special report in this week’s issue points out, only Zimbabwe and Haiti had lower GDP growth than Italy in the decade to 2010. In fact GDP per head in Italy actually fell. Lack of growth means that, despite Mr Tremonti, the public debt is still 120% of GDP, the rich world’s third-biggest. This is all the more worrying given the rapid ageing of Italy’s population.

Low average unemployment disguises some sharp variations. A quarter of young people—far more in parts of the depressed south—are jobless. The female-participation rate in the workforce is 46%, the lowest in western Europe. A mix of low productivity and high wages is eroding competitiveness: whereas productivity rose by a fifth in America and a tenth in Britain in the decade to 2010, in Italy it fell by 5%. Italy comes 80th in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” index, below Belarus and Mongolia, and 48th in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, behind Indonesia and Barbados.

The Bank of Italy’s outgoing governor, Mario Draghi, spelt things out recently in a hard-hitting farewell speech (before taking the reins at the European Central Bank). He insisted that the economy desperately needs big structural reforms. He pinpointed stagnant productivity and attacked government policies that “fail to encourage, and often hamper, [Italy’s] development”, such as delays in the civil-justice system, poor universities, a lack of competition in public and private services, a two-tier labour market with protected insiders and exposed outsiders, and too few big firms.

All these things are beginning to affect Italy’s justly acclaimed quality of life. Infrastructure is getting shabbier. Public services are stretched. The environment is suffering. Real incomes are at best stagnant. Ambitious young Italians are quitting their country in droves, leaving power in the hands of an elderly and out-of-touch elite. Few Europeans despise their pampered politicians as much as Italians do.

Eppur si muove

When this newspaper first denounced Mr Berlusconi, many Italian businesspeople replied that only his roguish, entrepreneurial chutzpah offered any chance to modernise the economy. Nobody claims that now. Instead they offer the excuse that the fault is not his; it is their unreformable country’s.

Yet the notion that change is impossible is not just defeatist but also wrong. In the mid-1990s successive Italian governments, desperate not to be left out of the euro, pushed through some impressive reforms. Even Mr Berlusconi has occasionally managed to pass some liberalising measures in between battling the courts: back in 2003 the Biagi labour-market law cut red tape at the bottom, boosting employment, and many economists have praised Italy’s pension reforms. He might have done much more had he used his vast power and popularity to do something other than protect his own interests. Entrepreneurial Italy will pay dearly for his pleasures.

And if Mr Berlusconi’s successors are as negligent as he is? The euro crisis is forcing Greece, Portugal and Spain to push through huge reforms in the teeth of popular protest. In the short term, this will hurt; in the long term, it should give the peripheral economies new zip. Some are also likely to cut their debt burden by restructuring. An unreformed and stagnant Italy, with a public debt stuck at over 120% of GDP, would then find itself exposed as the biggest backmarker in the euro. The culprit? Mr Berlusconi, who will no doubt be smiling still.

As a lifelong socialist/liberal I feel that the constant attacks on all of the political parties, save your own (which you claim is not one anyway) is seriously impeding the left-leaning political views, giving the right-wing much delight.

Why?

Simple really; people that see people as more important to life than money (those on the left usually qualify best) also question their own political allegiances continuously. Right-wing supporters have no such problems with their thinking - right-wing is right-wing for them - there is no thought process involved, only emotional desires.

You must try, one day, to see beyond your desire for popularity and, dare I say it, your desire for fame. The common good can only be achieved by a concerted effort to recognise that people are all different and that their desires are understandable, if a little shallow at times (OK, so sometimes not so little). Appealing to the young alone is not going to help achieve the changes that are needed in our society: not at all. As has been pointed out to you before, you are merely prolonging the right-wing in government and Berlusconi in power. If your were in the UK, Berlusconi would have already given you a knighthood for all that you have done for him!

The left is in disarray here and there are many people still involved with the various parties (too many of those too, in my opinion!) that predate Clean Hands. Those people were brought up in the era of easy money and bribe collection as a matter of course - a 'right' that proved they were 'important'. Today, the younger people are still being tainted by association - this time with both Berlusconi and the various mafia groups that control an manipulate the establishment here. It is a complicated issue and not one that can be helped at all by dividing people still further from the realities of life here. Realities that cannot be possibly helped by offering 20 year old candidates for political positions when, clearly, they have neither the knowledge nor the experience to be taken seriously by the majority of voters - only the new, young ones. By the time they have the required experience, they too will be tainted by the current political system - which will have continued to operate without serious questioning.

So, my point is: become a serious man. Forget fame and fortune - no, really, I know you refuse the state support for political parties (bravi to all of you) but there is much, much more to it all than that - even if many of your supporters have not yet realised this.

Yes, I am old. Yes, I am foreign (although I have lived in Italy for far longer than the majority of your supporters). And, yes, I am deeply concerned by what happens here as well as equally affected by it as you yourself are. My age is often used against me because - well, just because. Obviously, I am far too old to actually understand anything (even though I was manning the barriers back in the 60's) and, being a foreigner, will never understand Italy (even though I only have Italian family and have lived, breathed, worked, eaten, laughed and cried here for many years.

But, è così. Please, bepe. Try to do something of value for Italy - not just your ego.

Lastly, Davide. English here please. Most of the people that look here are either trying to improve their English or speak only English. Grazie.

Bella questa.
Sono un italiano all'estero, ho ricevuto la busta contenente le procedure e le schede di votazione ieri 11Giugno. Si vota per corrispondenza ed il mio voto doveva pervenire entro le ore 16.00 del 9 giugno all'ambasciata....altro giro altra corsa, sara'per il prossimo.
E pensare che il terzo quesito sul nucleare e' stato dichiarato ammissibile per gli ITA all'estero.
Davide