Return of the Lira? Italian general election, 2018

[Hot Pepsi]

That US figure is bollocks for a start. Nearly 5% of the US workforce aren't even meant to be in the country.

Many of them (most?) still get a W-2.

Maybe I don't understand the definition of "shadow economy."

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Bloke who lost to Francois Hollande tells us how it's done.

Tubby, I really need to comment on this but I think I need to chillax first, I’m in not in a zen mood tonight, I was going to go swimming at 6pm to vent my anger but best to avoid others tonight I thought, swimming-pool rage is all the fucking rage at the mo, so it was wise of me to stay clear of piscine waters tonight.

When I read stuff like that Tubby, I have a good mind to let rip in 11 languages about bachibouzouks like Sarko, Hollande and the Sheikhs. It makes me wish I could spit flabellums on fire at this precise moment, really does. I may well need Spoony's sublime encyclopedia of offensive terms that no human being has ever heard of before. I wish Spoony will produce a dictionary of expletives in 9 volumes one day, I’ll his first customer, I’ll order 57 copies and give them out to morose pensioners for Christmas.

My favourite shop in the whole world is La Maison du Dictionnaire off rue Delambre in Paris, I could spend a whole fortnight’s holiday in that place, especially as in the middle of rue Delambre there's Gégé, a bibulous Breton who runs a bar and is so usually Brahms and Liszt by 8pm that it's open bar for everybody. But I think he died two years ago, very unfortunate, and some crashing bore has taken over his dive, not the same chanson anymore, you have to pay now, ça fait chier. There used to be the Irish Centre next door too, two crêperies, lots of convenience shops, a launderette and a lovely Vietnamese canteen restaurant. Fuck me, you could easily have spent your whole life there without leaving that street and die at 43 of a double cirrhosis of the liver, one from the Irish and one from Chez Gégé. I hope to die in The Maison du Dictionnaire, of a heart attack, crashing into a pile of football dictionaries or something. Bliss.

[Ginger Yellow]

Basically, southern Europe is very keen on a mutualised (ie federalised) deposit guarantee (think the FDIC, but for all banks), to reduce the sovereign/bank contagion vector and, less generously, to let them kick the can further down the road when it comes to their banking systems. Much of northern Europe sees this as fiscal transfers by other means, because it basically is (though in principle it could go in any direction). But EDIS (euro-FDIC) is the end-state of the Banking Union, which is a big EU goal that everyone has supposedly signed up to (and realistically is necessary to make the Euro work in the long term). So the feet-draggers have tried and largely succeeded in putting a bunch of conditionality on any mutualisation. Prefunding at a national level according to harmonised standards, etc. The latest negotiating position from these countries (though not Germany this time, oddly) is to demand two things that are anathema to Italy - decisive reduction of non-performing loans (presumably through write-downs or sales below book value), and making it more expensive for banks to hold (impliedly, southern European) sovereign bonds, so you don't get the situation where banking systems collapse because they're loaded up on the debt of their own shaky sovereign, so the sovereign has to bail out the banks, so the Eurozone has to bail out the sovereign. The inevitable logic of much of the post-2010 discussion around sovereign/bank linkage is something like that, but it would slash the capital ratios of the banks, so of course it's fiercely opposed by the lower rated sovereigns.

[Tubby Isaacs]

bachibouzouks

Ectoplasmes!

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

How did Ireland become part of a North East axis?

We're the most important part. We're the Laboratory, and blow ourselves up with risky alchemical economic behaviour on such a regular basis that we have to be kept at a safe geographical distance. A couple of hundred miles seems to be enough. In a very real sense ireland is the Yuri Gagarin/Evil Knievel/the Fruit fly of political economics. If you are a small to medium sized european country, that hasn't been a democracy for all that long, and you're thinking of doing something. You can quite literally take a look at the last 100 years of Irish political, economic and social history and find an example of what you are looking for. It's all there from the now traditional first item on the agenda being making the head of military intelligence, the richest man in the new country, Through trying to grow our own tobacco, all the way through to how to Go bankrupt in only four years, and then get out of it in four years without destroying everything.

We're very good at clientelism too. We have a lot teach people about that. Unlike Italy we are prepared to learn from our mistakes and make new, better ones. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a seminar where Irish officials were explaining to "Key Italian decision makers and influencers" how to upgrade their clientelism to 21st century standards so they stop killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

is to demand two things that are anathema to Italy - decisive reduction of non-performing loans (presumably through write-downs or sales below book value), and making it more expensive for banks to hold (impliedly, southern European) sovereign bonds, so you don't get the situation where banking systems collapse because they're loaded up on the debt of their own shaky sovereign, so the sovereign has to bail out the banks, so the Eurozone has to bail out the sovereign. The inevitable logic of much of the post-2010 discussion around sovereign/bank linkage is something like that, but it would slash the capital ratios of the banks, so of course it's fiercely opposed by the lower rated sovereigns.

why the fuck does Italy not want to deal with non performing loans. Why don't they just fucking get on with it. They have to do something. Who or what is stopping them?

[ursus arctos]

The majority of debt and hybrid instruments issued by Italian banks are held by retail investors (primarily their own customers, who were sold highly dodgy paper by their bankers).

A standard restructuring would wipe out most/all of these people's savings, and is therefore politically toxic.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

But their savings are invested in non performing loans, their savings are gone. if they can they should try and cash them in quickly.

Our pensioners lost a lot of money in our bank crash. But they knew about that right at the beginning. that's in the past now.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Bloke who lost to Francois Hollande tells us how it's done.

What a crock of bullwa. But the article’s source is Emirati so anything other than some deliriously hagiographic toshgammon about the local Sheikhs would be hareem. Sarko was hardly going to come out as an ardent champion for democracy and human rights I suppose, he simply tailored his hardline rhetoric to his UAE audience and squeezed in this "cult of the strongman" for good measure (and you have to pack a punch when you're on a €200K fee...). Further down:

Mr Sarkozy pointed to the UAE as an example of a country that was able to rapidly succeed and prosper because of its Rulers.“I believe that it’s the leadership that makes the country. We are in Abu Dhabi. In 50 years, they built an extraordinary country because they had the leadership,” said Mr Sarkozy.

Apart from being a prize cunt but we always knew that, Sarkozy’s big problem at the moment is that he’s bored senseless, he even said so himself a few months ago. Not bored in the traditional idle sense (as he’s got his speeches, his business trips to Africa etc.) but deprived of the limelight kind of bored, no longer top dog down at the Élysée Palace and no longer leader of the right preparing his comeback (gubbed at the last elections' primaries). Being relatively anonymous seems to piss him off big time and to have triggered in him the most vile instincts. The man’s not just bored but bitter and twisted.

Hollande’s just as crabby and vainglorious, the useless ninnyhammer ended up being less popular than a serial killer but he is still determined to tell us how great he really was and how everybody else was wrong in a 500-page book he’s writing ("Les leçons du pouvoir", due for release next month), all about his wondrous five years as president. Fucking hell, 500 pages (apparently), what a sodding waste of trees, this torchon should look like Len Shackleton’s chapter on the average director’s knowledge of football really:



FFS, can’t the cunt understand that nobody gives a flying cornichon now about what he did or more likely didn’t do. You’re gone mate, you’re history, people just remember you for spending €10,000 a month of taxpayers’ money on your one hair so just piss off now, you vain narcissistic crashing bore.

[Hot Pepsi]

I once read a thing about how the mafia came to be in Sicily and it was something about how it transitioned from feudalism relatively late and quickly and that somehow created an opening, perhaps even a need, for a new system of big-men-and-their-thugs, but I can’t recall the exact argument. Maybe somebody else remembers, but it seems relevant.

Also read that “mafia” really only applies to the Sicilian mob. So it doesn’t apply to other Italian gangs and terms like “Russian Mafia” are inaccurate.

Unfortunately our two Rome-based correspondents don’t seem to post here any more.

[ursus arctos]

Both points are correct, though.

Their hands are quite full with their daughter, BTW

[Ginger Yellow]

So it doesn’t apply to other Italian gangs and terms like “Russian Mafia” are inaccurate.

I mean, "Russian mafia" isn't supposed to be literal. It's like saying "Leyton Orient ultras" or something.

[Hot Pepsi]

Right. But there are also important differences in how they’re organized or not.

[Flynnie]

We should all aspire to a world where anglophones have to say 'Ndrangheta.

[Moonlight Shadow]

I don't recall the words "mafia" or any other used to define associations of criminals used in "Gomorrah". They start calling it "il sistema" more often in S3

[Tubby Isaacs]

We should all aspire to a world where anglophones have to say 'Ndrangheta.

You've just prompted me to buy a book about them.

I'll still not learn how to pronounce it, mind.

[Flynnie]

I don't recall the words "mafia" or any other used to define associations of criminals used in "Gomorrah". They start calling it "il sistema" more often in S3

It's officially the Camorra, which I think is why Saviano chose the title he did.

[N est à?]

So do we think Salvini, in his 'baci e abracci' tweet is directly threatening Saviano, who remains under police protection?

[Moonlight Shadow]

It's officially the Camorra, which I think is why Saviano chose the title he did.

Are you sure it's not a biblical reference?

[ursus arctos]

It works both ways.

See the etymology section of the Italian Wiki

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Many of them (most?) still get a W-2.

Maybe I don't understand the definition of "shadow economy."

Does that mean they file tax returns? That's fucking hilarious, and disgusting.

[ursus arctos]

They do if they want to get a refund of what has been withheld, but I think Reed seriously underestimates the scope of the cash economy in other parts of the country.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Kev, the anecdote about Le Havre seems a bit Daily Telegraph, ranting about alternative culture and a dig at Lang, concluding with the election of a rw mayor which seems to be good news. Not sure if it is the author comment or the website commentator spinning the tale tbf.

A propos nothing, what do you think of Reiser? I am a big fan....

Seeing that we’re now moving towards something unrelated to the Italian elections, I’ve put my reply here.

A propos nothing, what do you think of Reiser? I am a big fan....

This, grosso modo.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i...-ago-np5vsvlkt

Italians trying to understand their populist future by studying the electoral map after Sunday’s shock election result have found it looks a lot like the map of Italy 200 years ago.

The almost total domination of the anti-establishment Five Star in the south corresponds with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, run by the Bourbon monarchy, which was absorbed into the new Italian state on unification in 1861.

Pino Aprile, the historian and author, said it was no coincidence that an anti-establishment party had found fertile ground there: “After unification, the kingdom was exploited for its resources by the north. It was treated as a colony then and still is. The Five Star vote in the south is a response to 150 years in which Rome has exploited southerners.”

The oil-rich southern region of Basilicata has had its oil revenue spirited away, he said. “They should be like Texans, lighting cigars with banknotes. Instead youth unemployment is soaring.”
Mr Aprile, whose book Terroni documented the harsh treatment of independence-minded southerners by northern troops after unification, said the region had missed out on the investment in highways, railways and health services enjoyed in north Italy. “Social spending for the poor today is 50 times higher in Trieste than in Vibo Valentia in Calabria,” he said.

The north backed the anti-migrant League party and voted for the right-wing coalition it formed with Silvio Berlusconi and the Brothers of Italy, a party descended from wartime fascists.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Some of the things detailed here are going to be problematic in the extreme. Simply put, where the fuck are they going to get the money from in order to do this? One of the problems with being effectively bankrupt is that you need to borrow money to pay your current bills, and no-one is all that keen to lend you more.