Moneybox

Italian Politics Update

Guy Dinmore has an FT article that seems to be full of wishful thinking that somehow Silvio Berlusconi is going to reinvent himself as a pro-euro liberal reformer who ushers in a bold new era of free market policies in Italy. Then 14 paragraphs in, you get this:

Critics dismiss Mr Berlusconi’s mooted return as dangerous fantasy that would panic markets, forcing Italy to seek a eurozone bailout. His real goal, they say, is to save his troubled media empire and defend himself from his various court cases, including charges that he paid for an underage prostitute.

That’s about the shape of things. I’m not really sure what a country can do to get out of the high-corruption bad-governance equilibrium that Italy seems to have landed in, but a Berlusconi return to power surely isn’t it.