Newsgroup: it.economia.borsa
Titolo: The Economist cosa il mondo pensa di noi

From The Economist print edition
Italians have a rotten choice to make, but it is time to sack Silvio
Berlusconi
FIVE years ago, this newspaper declared that Silvio Berlusconi was
unfit to lead Italy. Mr Berlusconi was (as he still is) the head of
Forza Italia, a political party that he had created only seven years
earlier, and as such he was the centre-right's candidate to become
prime minister. Despite our declaration, Italians voted his coalition
into power in May 2001-and Mr Berlusconi has been Italy's prime
minister ever since. Now, in the election on April 9th and 10th, he is
seeking a fresh term of office. He does not deserve one.
Our verdict against Mr Berlusconi in 2001 rested on two broad
considerations. The first was the glaring conflict of interest created
by his ownership, via his biggest company, Mediaset, of the three main
private television stations in Italy. The second was the morass of
legal cases and investigations against him and his associates for a
wide variety of alleged offences, ranging from money-laundering and
dealing with the Mafia to false accounting and the bribing of judges.
We concluded that no businessman with such a background was fit to lead
one of the world's richest democracies.
That view stands: we continue to think that Mr Berlusconi is unfit to
be prime minister, both because of the conflict of interest arising
from his media assets and because of his continuing legal travails (he
may shortly go on trial yet again for alleged bribery, this time of a
British witness, David Mills, who happens to be married to a minister
in Tony Blair's cabinet, Tessa Jowell). But five years on we have a new
and even more devastating reason to call for Mr Berlusconi's removal
from office: his record in power.
As we predicted in 2001, his premiership has been disfigured by
repeated attempts, including an avalanche of new laws, to help him
avoid conviction in legal trials. He has devoted much time not only to
changing the law to benefit himself and his friends, but also to
besmirching Italy's prosecutors and judges, undermining the credibility
of the country's entire judicial system. It is not surprising that tax
evasion, illegal building and corruption all seem to have increased
over the past five years. And, again as we predicted, he has done
little to resolve his conflicts of interest: instead, he has
shamelessly exploited the government's control of the state-owned RAI
television network. Directly or indirectly, Mr Berlusconi now wields
influence over some 90% of Italy's broadcast media, a situation that no
serious democracy should tolerate.
The failed reformer
Italian voters knew most of this in 2001, of course. Yet they still
chose to give Mr Berlusconi their backing, for quite another reason.
They hoped that he would deploy the business skills that had helped to
make him so rich to reform their weak economy, making all Italians
richer as well.
On this count, however, Mr Berlusconi's government must be judged an
abject failure (see article and article). Italy now has the
slowest-growing large economy in Europe. With wages still rising even
though productivity is not, and with currency devaluation no longer
possible now that Italy is in the euro, Italian business is fast losing
competitiveness. Many of the country's traditional producers in such
industries as textiles, shoes and white goods are under devastating
attack from lower-cost Chinese competitors. The Berlusconi government
has also undone much of the improvement to the public finances made by
its predecessor: the budget deficit and the public debt, the world's
third-biggest, are both rising once more.
It would be unfair to assert that Italy's economic difficulties are all
Mr Berlusconi's fault. In truth, its problems are similar to most of
Europe's, although they seem worse in Italy than anywhere else. As in
France and Germany, their roots stretch back for decades, not years. To
cure them will require the adoption of many tough reforms; and, as
France has just demonstrated so graphically, implementing such changes
is politically challenging, to say the least. But where the Berlusconi
government has really let Italy down is in failing even to begin the
process. Apart from a few sensible labour-market and pension reforms,
it has done too little to press ahead with market liberalisation, with
more privatisation and with the promotion of competition in what is one
of Europe's most overregulated economies. The conclusion from these
five years is that Mr Berlusconi is not and never will be a bold
economic reformer of the kind that Italy desperately needs.
Prodi's test
Unfortunately there are reasons to doubt whether his centre-left
opponent, Romano Prodi, would be a lot better. The former economics
professor grasps the need for change in Italy more clearly than Mr
Berlusconi, who has spent much of the campaign denying that the country
has any economic problems at all. Moreover, Mr Prodi made a fair stab
at initiating reforms when he was prime minister in 1996-98-and he
also succeeded in getting the country into the euro. But neither then
nor in his later stint as president of the European Commission did he
show himself to be a forceful leader, still less an unwavering advocate
of economic liberalism. Most worrying of all, if Mr Prodi wins the
election he seems certain to be dependent on the support of coalition
partners who are actively hostile to reform, particularly the
unreformed Communists who are led by Fausto Bertinotti.
In foreign policy, too, some of Mr Prodi's instincts may be unwelcome.
He is a faithful believer in a European federal superstate; Mr
Berlusconi's more sceptical approach to Brussels is one of his better
points. Mr Prodi's plans to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq are no
longer controversial-indeed, there is little difference between him
and Mr Berlusconi on this issue-but he is likely in general to adopt
a rather less friendly attitude to America than his rival.
It is the economy that will remain the critical test. Sadly, most
Italian people do not yet recognise how sick their economy has become.
For that reason they may not be ready for the pain of reform. Mr
Berlusconi is certainly not going to push them-and he remains unfit
for the office in any event. Italians should accordingly vote for Mr
Prodi, not il Cavaliere.


B  A  S  T  A !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
La bibbia della destra conservatrice sa che il maggior danno provocato
dal piduista mafioso monopolista e tanghero è quello di essersi
definito LIBERALE!!!!!!!!!!
e.
ci siamo!! olaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!
Leggete "L'amico degli amici" - tutte le prove che Dellutri è mafioso e fece da tramite per 30 anni tra Cosa Nostra e Berlusconi.

 ci siamo!! olaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!
ERNESTO sparalesto, va a votare quel dritto di PRODI, quello si che è
Dritto che ha fatto proprio in questi giorni le sue donazioni, e non
COGLIONE come te che lo andrai a votare..........HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!
IHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIH!!!!!!!    PRODI.........votatelo COGLIONI...........

sapevano perfettamente chi era il berlusca e quale macchia rappresenta per
le democrazie eppure è stato applaudito sia dai repubblicani che dai
democratici.

 Prodi, not il Cavaliere.
Grazie molto gentile per aver postato l'articolo!
;-)


Commento sciocco: il capo di governo di uno Stato che ha mandato a
crepare i suoi giovani perchè è un servo dovrebbe esser fischiato dal
padrone?
Io non mi fide dgeli americani (che razza di frase è???) e neppure
degli inglesi nè degli albigesi... THE ECONOMIST scrive cose
DOCUMENTATE è una delle riviste più importanti della terra!
e
e.
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