I got an email yesterday from one of my few readers complaining about my laziness on da blog. Apologies to all who may have gotten used to a rather frequent noise level coming from this blog, but I have devoted my free time over the last few weeks to the campaign for the election of [...]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
I’ll say it before the cynics jump in: I cannot believe that this was not staged, but if it wasn’t, then Obama has now replaced Steve McQueen as my King of Cool.
No economist here, so this may be flawed, but: increase VAT from 21% to 30% = EUR 54bn more tax revenues kill IRAP = EUR 38bn less tax revenues kill Provinces, keeping employees on payroll = EUR 5.3 saving raise retirement age to 65 years for everybody = saving gradually increasing until 2018 to EUR [...]
I think the size, depth and breadth of the problems revealed by mr. B’ buffoonish behaviour go way beyond fixing Italy, or even fixing the Euro. US press is beginning to realize that what seemed a rather picturesque second-tier leader of a second-tier economy actually wielded the power the shake the foundations of the world [...]
Faithful readers will know that I am no supporter of italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. I have always thought however that the genuine belief to be loved by the majority of italians was a powerful reason for him to be in politics: the man truly believes(ed?) to be “the best Prime Minister Italy ever had” as [...]
I just heard a statement accidentally on the radio – I don’t even know who made it – which left me dumbstruck simply because it rings so totally true, and for this very reason it is terrifying. The current economic crisis, compounded and multiplied by the speed at which the world devours information, whether sound [...]
Where were you? I remember well: I am taking part in a meeting at IBM Euro HQ on the 33rd floor of Tour Descartes in the La Défense complex in Paris. We just had lunch and are restarting the meeting when someone walks into our meeting room and says “You got to see this!”. We [...]
It does make no sense to me: all last week I worried about Italy about to go into a bankruptcy too large to be rescued, I saw our PM babbling on television clearly showing he has no clue about what’s going on or how to fix it and all of sudden the U.S. debt gets [...]
The fat lady has sung: FTSE Milano -2.10% To be honest, not many (including yours truly) expected for the Berlusconi speech’ to be well-received by the markets, but anyway we have the verdict now. So what is next? mr. B to leave before the end of summer mr. Napolitano to appoint a new “technical” Prime [...]
