By Paolo von Schirach April 24, 2013 WASHINGTON - Recently the WSJ provided a lengthy insight into Germany’s role in determining how the long and painful fiscal crisis affecting Southern Europe has been and will be handled. But, in fact, we already know the issues. The weak countries at Europe’s periphery, (Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 17, 2013 WASHINGTON – The usually sober The Economist, after providing a scathing indictment of the Italian society and its ruling elites, (Who can save Italy?, Feb. 16 – 22, 2013), engages in the worn –and in this case almost silly– wishful thinking whereby a major challenge (fixing Italy) is [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 3, 2013 WASHINGTON – Whatever the final outcome of Italy’s upcoming political elections, the surprising Berlusconi come back from the dead is worth noting as a clear indication that the for ever immature Italians love populist seducers who will tell them anything they want to hear. It also says a [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 20, 2013 WASHINGTON – I am really worried about too much praise for European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. He is described as Europe’s savior, as a genius because last Summer he bluntly said that he would do whatever is necessary to defend the Euro.
By Paolo von Schirach January 15, 2013 WASHINGTON – These days in Europe there is a far more optimistic atmosphere. It would appear that the big Eurozone crisis has been solved. No Greece exit. Italian and Spanish bond yields are back to tolerable levels. It seems that all problems, if not entirely taken care of, are now smaller and manageable.
By Paolo von Schirach December 9, 2012 WASHINGTON – It was expected that Mario Monti would not have a long tenure as Italy’s care taker Prime Minister. The distinguished economist is an outsider, the non political technocrat called upon a year ago by President Giorgio Napolitano to fix Italy’s finances and restore a modicum of international credibility. And [...]
By Paolo von Schirach December 4, 2012 WASHINGTON – It seems as if Europe’s slow bleeding will continue, indefinitely. So far, all the debt crisis interventions, including repeated Greek debt bail out packages, have been unable to bring the weak “Club Med” countries back to anything resembling normality.
By Paolo von Schirach December 3, 2012 WASHINGTON – Italy is not falling into the abyss; but it will stay in the swamp of no growth and high unemployment for many more years. The Italian daily La Repubblica interviewed experts asking them to predict Italy’s growth and employment for 2013 and beyond. The headline is depressing: Lavoro, [...]
By Paolo von Schirach November 21, 2012 WASHINGTON – Yet another EU-ECB-IMF summit about Greece ended with no final formula for ending the debt crisis that exploded in October 2009. Europe’s structural inability to finally fix the insolvency of Greece, by all measures a small country, should be taken as a powerful indicator of frightening institutional weakness.
By Paolo von Schirach November 11, 2012 WASHINGTON - Western nations have too much debt because of ever expanding social program that cannot be paid for. At the end of the road you may have severe basket cases like Greece, or less severe ones like Italy or France. The US is well on it way to [...]