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Arrivederci Berlusconi
Opinion: Just how corrupt do you have to be before you get the boot?!
I spoke to two Italian students who like me are on Erasmus here in Leuven, Belgium: Andrea D’Ettore and Daniele Militano. We discussed how corrupt Berlusconi was, his probable departure and Italy’s debt crisis.
Cormac: To begin, the IMF is in Italy; Silvio Berlusconi is on the brink of resignation; in a sense, everything that can go wrong has, and probably will go wrong. How worried are you for your home country of Italy?
Andrea: Actually, I feel like a contrarian because I’d hope Berlusconi doesn’t resign as soon as austerity measures would be passed by the parliament. But at the same time I fear that Italy could become the next victim of the debt crisis. Of course if Italy tries to borrow money, it would have to pay an interest rate of 7% for 10 year bonds; and I think that speculators will keep on putting Italy under pressure. Actually I don’t think that Berlusconi’s resignation will be the Pangaea for all of Italy’s problems.
Cormac: Italy is nearly €1 trillion in debt; things are worse than ever; Italy could likely be the next Greece. Although people have started saying that Italy is too big to bail out. We already know about the lack of wealth in the Mezzogiorno. Was this crisis inevitably going to happen?
Daniele: Well Italian debt is huge and it’s really worrying that these days the spread between the BTP and the German bonds has reached the highest levels ever- so it’s very worrying. The situation is critical; and there is that possibility of becoming even worse than Greece yes. But I must say there are some differences between Italy and Greece from the economic, but Italy obviously in land mass is a bigger country with a more erratic wealth. So it’s very worrying. There is that possibility of Italy becoming the next Greece yes. There are some attempts to diminish Italy’s economic and political sovereignty. This is horrific.
Cormac: How corrupt do you think Berlusconi is? Are you proud of him as a Prime Minister?
Andrea: I’m sure that Berlusconi has some problems with corruption; but actually I don’t want to be a judge of course. I’m sure that his success is because of the fact that he was supported and financed by the Mafia. There is a lot of evidence that demonstrate that Berlusconi, especially in Sicily, had a lot of contacts; so he benefited from contacts he had that were both corrupt and honest. Of course he doesn’t have a good reputation as a Prime-Minister for an important country like Italy; but no I wouldn’t be of proud of him. Also, the government have been involved with many sexual scandals. Our international reputation has fallen down drastically with these scandals. It’s an embarrassing disgrace. I can’t be proud of him.
Cormac: Andrea, Daniele, thank you very much. Much appreciated.
It has since emerged that the new Italian Prime Minister is Mario Monti; a former EU commissioner to Italy. This will mean no negotiation of the 7% ECB interest rates. It will mean the restraining of both Eurozone-sceptics and Euro-sceptics that exist almost everywhere now from Ireland to Portugal to Greece to Italy. The front cover of last week’s issue of Time Magazine read of Berlusconi ‘The man behind the world’s most dangerous economy’. It’s getting very late in the day for both the Eurozone and the EU. It’s because of the latter that we have such big government. Ireland needs its printing machines back from Britain. As the euro will fail.
By: Cormac O’Malley
Fancy doing an interview of your own? Go for it sure!
Amazing image thanks to aeneaststudio.
