Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: un benservito dall'Economist?

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=15017197
Our favourite prime minister
Time to say addio
Dec 3rd 2009
 From The Economist print edition
Silvio Berlusconi’s political career is teetering on the brink. He 
should go.
EVEN by his standards, it has been a bad week for Silvio Berlusconi, 
Italy’s prime minister. A court demanded surety for a huge fine on his 
Fininvest company, over its 2000 purchase of Mondadori, Italy’s biggest 
publisher. His wife, Veronica, is seeking a vast divorce settlement. His 
trial on charges of bribing a British lawyer, David Mills, is restarting 
after his immunity was quashed. New claims are being aired of one-time 
Mafia connections. A “No Berlusconi Day” protest is being staged in Rome 
this weekend. Mr Berlusconi has made political survival an art, but even 
he now looks to be in trouble (see article).
EPA
The Economist’s view of Mr Berlusconi has been consistent. We criticised 
his political debut in 1993-94. In 2001 we said he was unfit to rule 
Italy. In 2006 we advised Italian voters to say “Basta!” to his 
government. We urged them to back his centre-left opponent in March 
2008. Yet we have been cautious over joining the extensive and prurient 
commentary on a lurid array of sex scandals that have engulfed the 
73-year-old prime minister this year. We prefer to judge him on two more 
substantive matters: the conflicts of interest between his business and 
political jobs, and his government’s performance.
This week’s events have thrown a dark light on the first. The resumption 
of various court cases involving him or his associates, plus a series of 
other business and legal issues, are distracting him and his government 
from their other responsibilities. The damage is visible. With the 
financial crisis and the recession, attention has shifted from Italy’s 
economic difficulties to the plight of places like Greece. Yet although 
Italy’s admirable small businesses in the north are thriving, the 
country as a whole still lags behind badly. In the year to the third 
quarter its GDP shrank by more than the euro-area average, and it is 
expected to fall by almost 5% in 2009, as big a drop as in any other big 
west European country.
Mr Berlusconi’s government has been shockingly dilatory in its response. 
For a long time the prime minister denied that Italy would go into 
recession. He used the parlous public finances as a reason to justify 
why Italy’s fiscal stimulus should be much smaller than in other big 
countries. Unlike a few braver political leaders, he also failed to 
promote the sorts of economic reform needed to restore the country’s 
competitiveness, which has deteriorated sharply against Germany’s. Italy 
remains over-regulated and comes out distressingly badly in 
international league tables for such things as the ease of starting a 
business, the extent of corruption, the level of a country’s research 
spending and the quality of its education.
In his third government Mr Berlusconi has also pursued an eccentric 
foreign policy out of kilter with Italy’s Western allies. He has cosied 
up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in pursuit of 
Italian energy interests (this week he was in Belarus, chatting up 
another dictator, Alyaksandr Lukashenka). Under Mr Berlusconi, Italy 
continues to punch below its weight in the European Union and the world.
Go, go, Silvio
Partly thanks to his own machinations, there is no obvious successor if 
Mr Berlusconi quits. Indeed, some supporters say it is better to stick 
with him because the alternative would be chaos. Yet Italy has other 
potential leaders: Gianfranco Fini in his own party, who is openly 
plotting to oust Mr Berlusconi; Pier Ferdinando Casini in the centre, 
who held aloof from his third government; even the new centre-left 
leader, Pierluigi Bersani, who pushed reforms in the government of 
Romano Prodi. One of these would surely come to the fore were Mr 
Berlusconi to go. Whoever does might even complete the country’s 
transformation, which Mr Berlusconi halted in its tracks when he entered 
the political stage in the 1990s. Italy would be better off if il 
cavaliere now rode out of the scene.

 
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=15017197
sono 20 anni che l'Economist ripete che non solo dovrebbe andarsene,
ma non ha mai avuto titolo per diventare capo del governo. Eppure lì
resta...

 resta...
Eccerto, invece ne ha titolo (anzi "titoli") l'Economist, neh?
Non per difendere Berlusconi, ci manca altro, ma non � certo
un giornaletto ridicolo come quello che pu� decidere
Ciao! 

 Time to say addio
Economist 2001: "Berlusconi inadatto a guidare l'Italia".
Berlusconi vince le elezioni.
Economist 2006: "Berlusconi, basta".
Berlusconi torna al governo dopo due anni.
Economist 2009: "Berlusconi, addio".
ma farvi una manica di cazzi vostri, stramaledetti britt portasfiga?

 Economist 2009: "Berlusconi, addio".
Evidentemente sono comunisti.
PP