Tuesday 2 July 2013

It's Not Just Berlusca Who Can Embarrass For Italy

Silvio may have said out loud his assessment of the German Chancellor's bottom but there are public figures in Italy who display worse forms of vulgarity.  Consider these profound economic assessments delivered oh so sententiously in that washing-the-words-round-the-palate, plummy tones of the President of the Republic; he is addressing Confindustria (whose members enjoy  a certain entrepreneurial capacity).

Napolitano feels the need  for removal of "normative and administrative inadequacies which  prevent Italy from acquiring such significant potential resources [inward foreign investment].... "Today",  we are told by the Head of State, no less, "the flow of foreign investment is crucial to give an innovative stimulus to  production and employment recovery: not just to  provide fresh capital, but contributions from people, and ideas, of production and organisational models, of new technologies and systems."*

Who would ever have thought this?  Such innovative freshness of economic thought  from our 88 year old.  Take us away, Giorgio!

At least Berlusca knows what he's talking about.


* [only fair to put in the rotund phrases, the jejeune advice, as offered in the original, ed.]
".....rimuovere le inadeguatezze normative ed amministrative che impediscono di acquisire all'Italia così significative potenziali risorse». ..."Oggi l'afflusso di investimenti dall'estero in Italia é cruciale per dare uno stimolo innovativo alla ripresa produttiva e all'occupazione: non solo per l'apporto di capitali freschi, ma il contributo di persone e di idee, di modelli produttivi e organizzativi, di nuove tecnologie e sistemi".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A semi-president for a semi-presidential regime.

hatfield girl said...

Sole24Ore reporting that Italian inward foreign investment has fallen 70% in 2012, from $34 billion to $10 billion; only 0.6% of GDP 2008-2012 (UK 2.8% of GDP, same period).

So much for Napolitano's 'vibrant' words. Large-scale emigration of the highest-qualified, rising share in manufacturing of medium and low level technologies in direct competition with much lower-cost workforces elsewhere, uncertain institutional and legal climate with even retrospective legislation creating a high uncertainty business climate, very high tax burden, low research and development inputs (cf emigration of the brightest and best above), permanent destruction of parts of the manufacturing base, no capacity to respond to any economic recovery, entrenched levels of criminality in parts of the economy - and frighteningly high levels of political instability which arerising almost day by day, not helped at all by the semi-presidential regime.