Spaghetti Democracy

With the merest fig leaf of democratic cover Monti, appointed a Senator for life just a day or so ago and thus now at least a member of Italy's upper house, is putting a government together the cabinet of which we are told will have only twelve members all of whom will be technocrats of one kind or another. Not one of them including Monti will have been elected. Can you see this being accepted here? I can't as I think there would be fighting in the streets if there was even a hint of this happening here particularly if it were known as it is known in Italy that the eurocrats had connived with Italian civil servants to make sure Berlusconi was forced to go. The Italian socialist party is no doubt all in favour of what has happened as the one thing they wanted above everything else was to get rid of Berlusconi. They tried to beat him in general elections and failed. They tried through prosecutions on various specious charges and failed so they had to encourage his resignation by undemocratic means. This will rebound on them at some future point as Berlusconi may well bounce back at the next general election whenever it is called. The Italian socialists and others want the next election delayed until 2013 but Berlusconi's party want it called early next year. You can see why since Monti is now about to introduce additional measures to those austerity ones approved by the Italian Parliament on Saturday some of which Monti measures may well be more controversial than the Berlusconi ones. Although I believe the markets started off better this morning following Berlusconi's departure they fell back later when Italian bond yields climbed again. So much for the Monti factor.