Funnily enough you may be nearer to the point than you imagine. I don’t know whether he was playing it in this case, but he might have been. Certainly he and Maroni are ‘communicating’.

I think the big issue is who runds Italy. This is another reason for mentioning Argentina continually, since it is the most ‘Italian’ of the LA cultures.

Basically this forms another reason why the arguments that Italy would be economically worse off out of the euro essentially miss the point. This isn’t personal, it is only business. “Italy” as an entity would be, but an important class of political and economic interests could make a hell of a lot of money. It would be the business of the century.

Really now that Eurostat is chasing the numbers, the game is begining to be up for them. Now if you exit the Euro and do a sovereign default, you put a hell of a lot of money into play.

What I am saying is that Berlusconi is the Italian Menem, and Prodi will probably serve as the whipping boy in the way Carvallo did in Argentina.

That he takes about making that peg doesn’t mean he means what he’s saying. He may well wish to muddy the waters a bit more.

Berlusconi has also been in “bash brussels” mode for a few weeks, with a lot of disparaging comments about meddling Brussels bureaucrats. Not entirely coincidentally, Eurostat recently told the Italians they are counting their budget deficit incorrectly, and the Commission is on the point of launching an excessive deficit procedure under the stability pact.

I think we can agree on this Alex, the worrying thing is that he isn’t the only crank running the Italian govt these days. The lira dollar peg is a no-no. He doesn’t understand currencies, but maybe he does understand populist politics, and how to get a referendum. Remember, Berlusconi has still to pronounce, and Maroni is going the rounds insinuating that ‘Silvio’ agrees with him. (Which he probably doesn’t, but B is hedging his bets).

He hasn’t thought this through at all, has he? But then again, as I’ve pointed out before, he’s a crank.

Today Dutch eight o clock news (NOS-Journaal) was in Italy. On the issue of the (giant) Dutch Bank ABN-AMRO who tries to include Italian bank Banca Antonveneta. They face strong opposition from the Italian finance world but the program found a lot of “common people” much in favor of the Dutch take-over. (because of mistrust towards the Italian banks).

This post refers to an explanation of the Liga Nord’s statements on dropping the Euro in favor of the Lira as preparations for approaching elections.

And this: “Margherita party head of economic policies, Enrico Letta, made a joke about minister Maroni’ s proposal to come back to lira: “Euro makes the state save 44 billion euro. Maroni must explain how he will find this money with lira”. Speaking about labour minister’s proposal to collect signatures to promote a referendum to exit from the single currency, Letta commented that this hypothesis was devoid of sense. According to Letta it was a provocation that had exceeded the limits of decency. ” is from here

Well, of course economy and politics are so much interrelated. I am having more and more of a problem with just analysing economical and political trends from a distance.
It’s fine with me to openly discuss the fall of the € or the end of the “European project” as we know it but I miss a program. At least some pieces of it.
Why are so many people not engaging in politics?
Edward convinced me that the Eurozone was a bad idea. But we can not leave it there. It’s a completely different issue if it is wise (for any €-country) to even consider dropping the € again.
Are we not in great need for good economical and monetary advice towards politics?
I know part of the answer: what politics? Regional, National, European or Global?

I’m afraid c it is. In particular since Italy is, after Japan, the fastest ageing society in the world. This means the deficits are basically about to rise and rise. I don’t know whether you are willing to be convinced, but I am puting a post up on ageing and saving in Italy tomorrow.