Silvio Berlusconi was greeted by a jeering crowd as he went to hand in his resignation on Saturday
Monday November 14,2011
By Alison Little and Nick Pisa
ITALY sought to halt its slide towards financial catastrophe last night by naming former EU commissioner and economist Mario Monti as head of its “technical government”.
“Super Mario” succeeds Silvio Berlusconi as Prime Minister after a frantic day of talks between the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano and more than 25 political parties.
Today, all eyes will be on the financial markets to see if Italy has done enough to reassure them it will not need a Greek-style bail-out that could destroy the euro.
Mr Monti, 68, has received the backing of many of Italy’s opposition parties, but some of Mr Berlusconi’s supporters demanded elections.
His government is expected to consist of experts from Milan’s Bocconi University, where he is president, but may also include politicians.
It follows the announcement of ex-central banker Lucas Papademos as head of a crisis government in Greece last week, triggering cries that the EU is trampling on democracy to save the euro.
 Silvio Berlusconi was greeted by a jeering crowd as he went to hand in his resignation on Saturday  |
Italy is the eurozone’s third largest economy, with a spiralling national debt of €1.9trillion (£1.6 trillion). The cost of rescuing it would dwarf efforts to save Greece.
Mr Berlusconi, 75, stepped down after MPs agreed big economic reforms in a bid to slash Italy’s debt. In a defiant final statement, he said he was stepping down out of “a sense of responsibility, a sense of state”, without losing parliament’s confidence.
He declared: “It has been sad to see a responsible, generous gesture such as my resignation was welcomed with booing and insults.”
That followed humiliating scenes when he was greeted by a jeering crowd, who threw coins and branded him a “thief, buffoon and gangster” as he went to hand in his resignation on Saturday. The billionaire media tycoon – who was embroiled in sordid stories about “bunga bunga” parties and claims about his business dealings – has not ruled out a return to politics.
Yesterday he said he had been forced to quit by “threats and blackmail”.
Mr Monti said he would concentrate on “healing” Italy’s financial condition.
He said: “Our country needs to redeem itself. It needs to return to being more and more an ingredient displaying strength rather than weakness, in a European Union which we have helped found and in which we should be main actors.”
Italy’s crisis came amid dire warnings about the fallout for the rest of the world, including Britain, if the eurozone did not curb its debts.
Chancellor George Osborne said some EU finance ministers were “terrified” of the scale of their debts and said the Government’s policies had saved Britain from the same fate as Italy.
In Germany – where Prime Minister David Cameron will meet Chancellor Angela Merkel this week – magazine Der Spiegel said the government was planning for a “limited pain” Greek exit from the euro if its leaders refused to carry out austerity measures needed to earn its next EU-IMF bail-out payout.
And the next stage of this farce begins showing obvious signs of corruption from the EU, not one, but two Eurocrats being put in as Prime Ministers in Greece & Italy completely subverting democracy. Now just wait & see the austerity measures that will come into effect at lightening speed all without any democratic say from the people.
The global recession (& yes we are still in it) are a simple by-product of a corrupt monetary system, fractional reserve banking is clearly wrong, just tell me how many banks would go bust if this system wasn't used? Again I ask the simple question, what are the central banks doing to help this crisis that is destroying so many lives? The answer: Making an insurmountable profit out of it and gaining tyrannical power.
You don't have to have a degree in rocket science to understand that this is all one gigantic fraud, so why aren't our Government, or any Government for that matter, doing anything about it? I can only come to one conclusion, they are at the very least complicit, or perhaps even scared as we all know what happened to the last premier that was planning to print money independently of the central banks don't we? No? Perhaps a reminder of his most famous speech.
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