Friday 13 September 2013

Italian Meltdown

Prime Minister Enrico Letta, the Uriah Heep of Italian politics, has admonished us all for our persistent lack of respect for and acceptance of his administration.   We are costing the country billions of euros which could be invested in economic recovery if only we would settle down under the informally installed Troika-style arrangements agreed and steadily installed, over every political democratic resistance, since 2011.

Looking out over the smouldering ruins of the country's institutions, with the only edifice left standing being that of  the president of Italy, now almost 90,  attention is caught by the  new front opening in the real economy.  Entrepreneurs have been shutting down plant for years and shifting to production in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland and even the United States - shifting production to China is a decades-old practice - but the abandonment of factory and plant without hope of any further subsidy-farming is now being replaced by the abandonment of work-forces without provision for their welfare support.  Not to mention the physical trucking of machinery and key-skills workers to new, extra-Italian sites.  The Italian workforces have no redress; if they want to take up their jobs in Poland, for example, they can.  Only they can't really, can they?  For obvious reasons. Czy Pan mowi po Polsku?

Fiat has been the first example of a major industry exporting itself out of Italy, leaving only a fig-leaf structure behind but now the Italian steel industry seems to be taking its chance to shut down here.  Following the sequestration of its assets throughout Italy over a dispute in a southern Italian steel plant (whoever thought making basic steel is a clean and non-polluting undertaking?) about environmental conditions around the plant, the company has closed its sophisticated northern Italian production and research and logistics companies and sacked the workforce.  1500 highly-skilled workers in northern Italy are now out of work and (after a frantic meeting of Enrico Letta's government) on welfare benefits wholly funded by the tax-payer (no contribution from their erstwhile employer; after all, their industry has had its assets sequestered). 

No government truly running an advanced capitalist European country would find itself scrambling to contain the actions of a magistrate in a mean little town in a depressed area acting off their own bat to affect industrial policy and sophisticated output for export in the productive sectors of the national economy.  

It wouldn't really matter for most of us what Italy does, except, these  repellent incompetents are sliming round European capitals being ever so 'umble,  pushing their agenda for their 'presidency' of the European Union after the New Year.  

Their agenda consists of mutualising their debt, allocating European tax-payers' resources to their elitist local expenditures, demanding we take their banks and themselves at their own estimate, maintaining  themselves in national power at any cost,  and insinuating themselves into European power whenever and wherever they can.   If Italy is taken seriously in its claims to being a worthy counterparty to anyone or anything we will have only ourselves to blame for losses.

14 comments:

Nick Drew said...

glad the bulletins have resumed, HG - if only the subject matter could be welcomed as well ...

dearieme said...

Italy is a geographical expression.

Was Metternich right?

hatfield girl said...

But I can't write about other than Italian/ European politics, ND. That's what the gossip and the emails and the chitchat is about. I suppose I could write notes on the likely size of the olive harvest and about the beastly tomatoes expecting me to welcome them and put them in jars for the winter. But the sheer creepiness of Letta and his puppet master is quite a performance to watch; they'll be putting on their show for the entire EU shortly.

hatfield girl said...

It's hard not to sympathise with the German view of the Italian state and its elites after this summer, Dearieme. The only serious Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore has been serialising the events of exactly 60 years ago all summer long - it's been like 'Yesterday in 24...'. Day by day and sometimes hour by hour accounts of July 1943 as Mussolini's elected government was overthrown by a coup organised by the king and a puppet government installed: Mussolini advising his ministers to flee with their families as the new government intended to kill them all; the murder of various ministers and armed forces senior officers; the lying to their German allies when asked to confirm their continued reliability; their pretensions when faced by the English and American officers accepting their surrender while they lied to the Germans.

No, the elites here are too real, and too dreadful to be dismissed in Metternich's terms.And they've never owned-up or faced-up to what they were and what they did at the turning point in modern European history. Nor what they are now, as a result.

Sackerson said...

HG: how about a conspectus of the Italian political-economic scene, for Broad Oak? Prego?

"Sackerson"

CityUnslicker said...

A troubling post, it serves well as a signpost to the return of the euro crisis after the German election. Frau merkel is going to have little truck trying to sort out this mess. Walking away will be a massive threat in and of itself.

cuffleyburgers said...

Glad to see you posting again HG.

Letta is a creepy bastard isn't he and Ilva is just mental.

and yet the TV news and Quita Colonna is all Berlusconi berlusconi... truly a tragedy.

Along with the Irish no country is more truly shafted by its political class.

dearieme said...

I see the Italian government is being elected tomorrow. Will Merkel win, do you think?

dearieme said...

Is it clear yet whether the new government of Italy will be a coalition, or can Frau Merkel go it alone?

Weekend Yachtsman said...

I see that Letta is now hinting, in a round-about sort of way, that next year's Euro elections might need to be "postponed", in case the plebs give the wrong answers.

Shooting is too good for them, isn't it? How about we hang them up by their feet from the canopy of a filling station? What? It's been done before? Well, I ...

lilith said...

I hope the olives are not driving you insane HG. In other gossip, Calfy's cousin is one of your favourite designer's models :-) See here

Jeff Wood said...

My Dear, I hope all is well with you and we hear from you before long.

A little reading:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-10/another-conspiracy-theory-becomes-fact-meet-men-plan-behind-italys-bloodless-coup

Anonymous said...

Come on lady, I want an informed opinion on the Venezia-Veneto situation please........ pretty please;¬) [cheesy grin]

Will they - Venezia tell Roma to go forth and multiply?

If they did what about the Lega Nord?

Then, what about the federasts in Brussels and then, the Catalans?

Ooh, the ecstasy of independence! A heady drug indeed.

Ravenscar.

Elby the Beserk said...

HG,

I thought this might interest you.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/perry-anderson/the-italian-disaster

Hope all is well with you and yours.