Italy
Repubblica Italiana
German Exceptionalism Is Becoming a Problem
Bruce Stokes, Der Spiegel
European Voters Reject Overreach from Brussels
The Australian
Inside the Amazing Underground World of the Mafia
John Dickie, BBC
Italy Has a Growing Pizza Problem
Yuval Rosenberg, The Fiscal Times
Bunga Bunga Bounces Back
The Australian
Southern Europeans have grown impatient with Germany's self-imposed role as Europe's iron fist in recent months, but their criticism seems to have left the majority of Germans unfa...(full article)
The populist UKIP's achievement in confounding expectations and winning 25 per cent of the vote falls into an anti-establishment pattern seen with the rise of the US Tea Party, the...(full article)
The biggest cocaine smugglers in Europe are the 'Ndrangheta, a mafia from the "toe of Italy", Calabria. They may not be as well known as their Sicilian counterparts but their drugs...(full article)
A number of overheated media reports this week have had some cheesy fun pointing out the latest Italian calamity: a shortage of skilled pizza makers. Italy’s economic crisis ...(full article)
After his ignominious exit from office 18 months ago, it is hard to believe former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is back with his hands on the levers of power in Rome. But he is...(full article)
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Most Recent Articles
Austerity Debate Misses Half the Point - Hugo Dixon, Reuters
Europe is over-dependent on a broken bank system. It should be emulating the United States which relies much more on capital markets to fund industry and households. But Brussels i...
Last Stand of Italy's Bankrupt Political Class - Alberto Toscano, Guardian
A deal with the devil Berlusconi may shore up this dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Can it last in a land pulsing with atomised rage?...
Italy's New Coalition Doomed from the Start - Wall Street Journal
Italy's debts are still unsustainable, and no Italian Prime Minister should imagine for a moment that he can afford to spend his way to growth. Without reform that cuts marginal ta...
Euro Recession Threatens to Spread North - Jack Ewing, New York Times
No company symbolizes German industrial might like Daimler, the giant maker of Mercedes-Benz autos and trucks. So when the company said this week that it, too, had finally been cau...
Italy Turns to Mr. Napolitano, Again - Japan Times
Italy could do worse than re-elect Mr. Giorgio Napolitano to a second term as the country’s president. Unfortunately a second term for the incumbent is yet more proof that It...
Italy's Utterly Dysfunctional Politics - The Economist
What we are witnessing in Italy is remarkable, and at times scarcely believable. On April 20th, after five failed attempts to elect a new president, an electoral college that inclu...
The Wreck of the Euro - Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
The crisis is crippling the south, but the south has no power to resolve the crisis. The crisis isn’t comfortable for the north but still looks less painful than the solution. So...
Italy's Clownish Politics Not That Funny - Paddy Agnew, Irish Times
For once, the opera buffa of modern Italian political life runs the risk of not being remotely funny....
Germans Pay Taxes, Greeks Don't - Alex Hageluken, Suddeutsche Zeitung
A new report finds that southern European households have higher net household income than places like Germany, which is shelling out euro bailout cash. Things must change....
Europe's Love Just Got Even Tougher - Bill Emmott, The Guardian
Getting tough on Cyprus was sensible. Elsewhere in the eurozone, a much softer touch is needed....
Italy's Carnivalesque Justice System - Olga Khazan, The Atlantic
When Amanda Knox was acquitted 2011, four years after she was originally arrested for the murder of her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, Italian newspaper Il ...
Italy Redeems Itself - The Hindu
In the end, the Italian government did what was right and sensible by sending back the marines accused of killing two fishermen off the Kerala coast to face trial here in India. No...
Italians Happy with No Government - Tim Hedges, The Commentator
It took me by surprise, perhaps because the British don’t expect humour from other nations, and no one suspects it from an Italian contadino on a cold day. He said “we ...
India and Italy on a Costly Collision Course - The National
When a friend behaves badly, it's easy to take a time out. Stop taking their phones calls, pretend to be out when they come to apologise....
The Most Dangerous Man in Europe - Jan Fleischhauer, Der Spiegel
Beppe Grillo, leader of the populist Five Star Movement in Italy, prides himself on his ridicule of the parliamentary system. Yet while his anti-establishment rhetoric sounds appea...
Please, Not Another Italian Pope - Alexander Golts, The European
The biggest enemy of the papacy is the Roman Curia. Its internal strife has alienated two successive popes. The first one, a Polish pope, sought refuge by going out into the world....
Markets Too Sanguine About Italy - Hugo Dixon, Reuters
The markets are too sanguine about Italy. The country's politics and economics are messed up -- and there are no easy solutions. And while Rome does have the European Central Bank ...
The Biggest Loser in Italy Is Angela Merkel - Milton Ezrati, National Interest
Because the election there was so close, questions have emerged about how cooperative Italy will be in the future. Not only does that threaten Merkel's own combined, European appro...
Italy: As Twisted as Spaghetti - Tim Parks, Newsweek
Imagine you need to get to the other side of a busy street in Milan. You go to the pedestrian crossing provided. Cars are obliged to stop when you step out onto the black and whi...
The Men Who Might Be Pope - Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
Several prelates often mentioned as potential popes have focused on dialogue with Islam, engagement with agnostics, social media or conservatism....
America's Italian Future - Michael Ledeen, Weekly Standard
Italy has long been the political laboratory of the West. From Roman republics and tyrannies through the city-states of the Renaissance, into the Counter-Reformation and on to fasc...
Spain Probably Won't Catch Italian Flu - Hugo Dixon, Reuters
One knee-jerk reaction to Italy's shock election was to worry about contagion to Spain. As Rome’s bond yields shot up last Tuesday, Madrid's were dragged up in sympathy. Thes...
Italy's Opera Buffa - The Japan Times
If the potential consequences of the Italian national election were not so severe, the outcome would be the stuff of great comedy. After all, one quarter of the votes were taken by...
Bizarre Election May Still Be Good for Italy - Alessandra Potenza, Atlantic
As the polls closed on February 25, early election results made it clear that Italy's recent economic stability would not last long. No party was able to get an absolute majority i...
Euro Crisis Breeding Comics, Not Fascists - Gideon Rachman, FT
Times may be tough but this is not the 1930s. Modern Europe is a richer, less traumatized continent....
Europe's Unemployed a Force to Reckon With - George Friedman, Stratfor
Germany sees itself as virtuous for its frugality. Others see it as rapacious in its aggressive exporting, with the most important export now being unemployment. Which one is right...
Why Europe Shouldn't Worry About Italy - Santini & Giumelli, Brookings
Contrary to what many think, the sick man of Europe is Europe itself, not Italy....
In Italy, Politics Is Just Show Business - Barry Strauss, RealClearWorld
Last month's Italian elections are a case in point. The ability to dominate the public stage dictated the results. Two born actors, Beppe Grillo, an ex-comedian, and Silvio Berlusc...
The World's Leaders Fail - Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
In the twentieth century it took a brutal series of hard knocks to wake the Western leadership class into competence and seriousness of purpose. Now the shock has worn off and once...
Italy's New Mussolini - Nicholas Farrell, The Spectator
The stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo, like the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini before him, has a craving to take over the piazza and mesmerise the crowd. Where once young Italians ...
The Triumph of the Pissed Off - Eric Ellis, The Global Mail
In other countries, voter anger has spilled over into violence and xenophobia, but in Italy, former comic Beppe Grillo is winning with a form of vigilante politics he thinks could ...
Italy's Election Results: Send in the Clowns - The Economist
A SENSE of humour in adversity can be attractive, but it is not always useful. Confronted by the worst recession in their country since the 1930s and the possible implosion of Euro...
Germany Deserves Berlusconi - Stefano Casertano, The European
Berlusconi and his zombie magic are a product of German foreign policy imposed on Europe. What do Italians hate? Austerity. What did Berlusconi say? No austerity. That’s the ...
Italy and the Year of the Lowest Common Denominator - Brookings
The next Italian government faces a double challenge. It is expected to keep order in public finance, as the other governments of the past 20 years, and to rekindle growth, as none...
Wildcat Populism Rattles Europe - Simon Jenkins, The Guardian
From Italy to Eastleigh, the economics of self-flagellation have set off a wave of wildcat populism, with unpredictable results....
Berlusconi Surge Shows Why Europe Needs Deeper Union - Bloomberg
The return of Silvio Berlusconi to the Italian political stage sends an unmistakable message to Europe’s leaders: They will have to be a lot more ambitious if they want to ho...
Austerity Under Fire in Europe - The Guardian
Italians this week have voted their discontents, their divisions, and their fantasies. Not so very different, then, from other European electorates....
Hung Parliament? Italy Sparks Euro Fear - Hooper & Davies, Guardian
Italy threatened to pitch the eurozone into fresh turmoil on Monday as projections of the result of its general election pointed to a hung parliament and confirmed that the anti-e...
Why the Euro Debt Crisis Never Really Ended - Michael Schuman, Time
The political upheaval in the Eurozone's third-largest economy in the wake of this week's national election shows us just how troubled the euro zone really is, and how dangerous it...
Democracy, Italian Style - Sydney Morning Herald
The Italian people have spoken in national elections this week, but what are the citizens of the world's eighth biggest economy telling us?...
Why Bunga-Bunga & Ex-Communists? - Matthew Yglesias, Moneybox
If you really want a deep understanding of Italian politics, go somewhere else. But if you're moderately curious why it is that Italian politics is dominated by Silvio Berlusconi...
Italy Votes for Chaos and Euro Crisis Is Back - Megan Greene, Bloomberg
Italy’s parliamentary election could not have gone worse for the country or the euro area. It is now possible that in the coming months the currency zone’s third-largest econom...
How Beppe Grillo Took Italy by Storm - Jamie Bartlett, The Guardian
"The mainstream parties are finished! They won't survive for long", announced Beppe Grillo, in typical style, on his Five Star Movement's online television channel late on Monday...
Austerity the Big Loser in Italian Election - Paul Krugman, NY Times
Two months ago, when Mario Monti stepped down as Italy's prime minister, The Economist opined that "The coming election campaign will be, above all, a test of the maturity and rea...
Too Many Comedians in Italian Election - Bloomberg
Italian voters have the unenviable task next week of choosing among two populist clowns, a politically challenged academic and the leader of an unpredictable coalition of the left....