Has Rome Saved Italy?
Italy came to brink before being saved by "King George" … Since an election in February that left no group with enough support to govern alone, one political disaster had followed another like a motorway pile-up, culminating in the failure of 1007 "grand electors" from parliament and the regions to elect a new president after four attempts. The political drama had implications far beyond Italy. The euro zone's third biggest economy had once before narrowly avoided being sucked into the region's financial crisis. Political gridlock brought renewed danger. Italy's two biggest political forces climbed the Quirinal, highest of Rome's seven ancient hills, and begged President Giorgio Napolitano to stay for a second term. – Reuters
Dominant Social Theme: Only politics can save us.
Free-Market Analysis: So we see again that Reuters celebrates the political at the expense of the marketplace. If Italy is on the brink, it is because of a series of political decisions that have stripped the country and citizens of their solvency.
But, of course, Italy has been under attack by centralizers for centuries. The repository of the Renaissance, Italy blossomed as a series of city-states that competed with each other in the arts, sciences, philosophy and economics.
The Mafia is a very Italian creation, drawing on an age-old suspicion of centralized government and government in general. Italians generally are not a very bureaucratic people in their personal lives. Sympathy for government and government solutions are not universal by any means.
One could make a comparison to Greece, perhaps where the same national characteristics are in evidence: tax evasion, lack of respect for government authority, a focus on local culture and a concentration on family.
One could even argue that this cultural resonance – which extends to Spain, Portugal and even, curiously, France, is a hallmark of ancient cultures.
Having experienced the wars, oppression, tithing and various kinds of control-induced scarcities that authority generates, these cultures have generated private ways of coping, of which the family is perhaps the most important.
And thus the family is looked upon by centralists and globalists of all stripes as … the enemy. Controllers want to control … and the chosen weapon is government, which must be aggrandized.
And thus we have another government-aggrandizing article. Here's more:
The group's pleas flew in the face of Napolitano's repeated and fierce rejection of the idea, going back months. With his 88th birthday two months away, the former communist was looking forward to retirement, playing with his two grandchildren and taking a holiday on the island of Capri with his wife Clio.
Napolitano was so sure of leaving that removal men had already taken away most of his personal effects. Sources with knowledge of the events inside the former papal palace on the Quirinal hill said his office was so bare that there were not even notebooks available when he received the delegations.
He had told his aides the night before that he expected to hand over the presidency within days, the sources said.
The presidential election was key to ending the two-month deadlock and installing Italy's 64th post-war government with some hope of passing reforms vital to counter a deep recession, but the politicians were incapable of finding a way out of the impasse.
Napolitano eventually agreed to stand again, was overwhelmingly elected and has installed a right-left grand coalition under center-left politician Enrico Letta, bringing the crisis to an end, for now.
While fragile, the government is given a reasonable chance of lasting for a while at least, thanks mostly to the president's powerful protection, and his threat to resign immediately if the politicians go back to playing games.
… As in November 2011, when Napolitano rescued Italy from a perilous debt crisis by replacing the discredited Berlusconi with technocrat Mario Monti, Italy's fate once again depends on the man affectionately known as "King George."
But with the future deeply uncertain as far as the eye can see, Italians are wondering whether he will really be forced to stay for a full seven year term, by which time he will be 94, in order to keep the euro zone's third-largest economy on track.
Who comes up with these article ideas at Reuters?
It is simply not true that this old man was "key … to passing reforms vital to counter a deep recession."
We can't imagine what those reforms would be. Everything that Italy suffers from – inflation, currency depreciation, bureaucratic regulation that stifles business and initiatives, high taxes that turn the government into an authoritarian adversary, etc. – come from Italy's broken political system.
The idea that the system that has broken Italy – and given the country over into the grasping hands of the EU – is "key" to an Italian resurgence is difficult to fathom … to say the least.
This constant adulation of government and breathless narratives casting government bureaucrats as saviors of economies that they are responsible for breaking down is just one more dominant social theme.
It is an important one for globalists that want to convince people that their prosperity is tied to government heroics. But it's not.
You don’t have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.
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