Voting intentions
#17
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Ah. I hadn't understood this before. In yesterday's Guardian -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-stock-markets
To understand why Berlusconi’s pact with the Northern League is so important you need to start with the Italian constitution. Unlike Britain and France, Italy has a parliament in which the two chambers have equal powers. So, to govern Italy (if anyone can be said to have governed Italy!), you need a majority in BOTH houses.
In 2005, Berlusconi’s then government brought in a new electoral law that made it perfectly feasible for a party to win the popular vote and take control of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, but fail to get an outright majority in the Senate. The reason is that, in each region, the party topping the poll in the Senate vote gets a hefty bonus to give it 55% of the upper house seats in that region. So parties whose following is concentrated in a particular region (like the Northern League) can achieve a disproportionate representation.
Then, as now (see below), the centre-left was ahead in the polls and it was an open secret that Berlusconi – acknowledging he could not win the election – wanted to lay a minefield for the likely victors. The centre-left did indeed win in 2006, but obtained only a razor-thin majority in the upper house and fell after two tumultuous years of knife-edge votes in the Senate.
In 2005, Berlusconi’s then government brought in a new electoral law that made it perfectly feasible for a party to win the popular vote and take control of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, but fail to get an outright majority in the Senate. The reason is that, in each region, the party topping the poll in the Senate vote gets a hefty bonus to give it 55% of the upper house seats in that region. So parties whose following is concentrated in a particular region (like the Northern League) can achieve a disproportionate representation.
Then, as now (see below), the centre-left was ahead in the polls and it was an open secret that Berlusconi – acknowledging he could not win the election – wanted to lay a minefield for the likely victors. The centre-left did indeed win in 2006, but obtained only a razor-thin majority in the upper house and fell after two tumultuous years of knife-edge votes in the Senate.
That – more than a Berlusconi victory – is the threat now. The League’s votes should deliver him two of the most populous of Italy’s 20 regions, Lombardy and Veneto. Seventy three of the 315 seats in the next Senate will be decided in just those two constituencies.
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#18
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Quote:
That – more than a Berlusconi victory – is the threat now. The League’s votes should deliver him two of the most populous of Italy’s 20 regions, Lombardy and Veneto. Seventy three of the 315 seats in the next Senate will be decided in just those two constituencies
I think this is becoming the key question now that it is clear that Bersani is not interested in joining with Monti (who seems to me to be increasingly naive in the dog-eat-dog world of politics).
I sense Bersani will end up as PM with a good majority in the Chamber but will he win the Senate as well? Not sure that he will - what do people think?
That – more than a Berlusconi victory – is the threat now. The League’s votes should deliver him two of the most populous of Italy’s 20 regions, Lombardy and Veneto. Seventy three of the 315 seats in the next Senate will be decided in just those two constituencies
I think this is becoming the key question now that it is clear that Bersani is not interested in joining with Monti (who seems to me to be increasingly naive in the dog-eat-dog world of politics).
I sense Bersani will end up as PM with a good majority in the Chamber but will he win the Senate as well? Not sure that he will - what do people think?
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#19
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I'll vote for whoever gives EU citizens the right to vote in national elections.
(ie. nobody)
Berlusconi is going to be on Santoro's programme tonight .. should be good!
(ie. nobody)
Berlusconi is going to be on Santoro's programme tonight .. should be good!
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the deal is he cant walk out, and Santoro cant preach at him. 3 min time limit for monologues. Cant wait to see what ridiculous promises he makes - so far no IMU, no tax, no bollo, can we expect 10.000 euro for everyone and a happy healthy life if he wins?
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#25
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Of course he will abolish the IMU, he paid 300,000 euro on his properties last year.
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yes, but he earned 42 million. thats about 0,75% of his income he spent on IMU and what he must give to Veronica for a long weekend
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#27
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Have you all noticed how vocabulary changes:
Conservative:
old meaning: someone who wants to defend the capitalist system
new meaning: someone who wants to defend the health service, state schools, pensions etc.
Communist:
old meaning: someone who wants to reorganise the economy on communist lines
new meaning: anyone who disagrees with Berlusconi, from left or right
Reformist:
old meaning: someone who want reforms
new meaning: someone who wants to abolish reforms
By the way, what about that 3 million a month for Veronica? If I'd been a judge I'd have given her that on condition that she gave 90% of it to charity, leaving her "only" €300,000 a month.
Blimey, the minimum pension is about €500. €3 million = 6,000 minimum pensions. Or you could give a 50% increase to 12,000 pensioners.
Conservative:
old meaning: someone who wants to defend the capitalist system
new meaning: someone who wants to defend the health service, state schools, pensions etc.
Communist:
old meaning: someone who wants to reorganise the economy on communist lines
new meaning: anyone who disagrees with Berlusconi, from left or right
Reformist:
old meaning: someone who want reforms
new meaning: someone who wants to abolish reforms
By the way, what about that 3 million a month for Veronica? If I'd been a judge I'd have given her that on condition that she gave 90% of it to charity, leaving her "only" €300,000 a month.
Blimey, the minimum pension is about €500. €3 million = 6,000 minimum pensions. Or you could give a 50% increase to 12,000 pensioners.
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#28
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good points made there jon ![Thumbs Up](https://britishexpats.com/forum/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif)
Quite a good match on Servizio Pubblico last night ... you've got to hand it to Berlusca.. he can 'defend' himself, and unlike Bush, Blair, etc. he doesn't need any 'spin doctors' . .in fact it only went all a bit sour when he read out all that stuff against Travaglio, which was just blurb written by his 'advisors'.
He's still a burke though.
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Quite a good match on Servizio Pubblico last night ... you've got to hand it to Berlusca.. he can 'defend' himself, and unlike Bush, Blair, etc. he doesn't need any 'spin doctors' . .in fact it only went all a bit sour when he read out all that stuff against Travaglio, which was just blurb written by his 'advisors'.
He's still a burke though.
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#29
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Going by this, in this morning's FT, none of the main players is any good:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/882bb27a-6...#axzz2IYlpuIJ3
January 20, 2013 7:26 pm
Monti is not the right man to lead Italy
By Wolfgang Münchau
Most Italians know they owe the fall in bond yields to Draghi
The financial crisis has faded in Italy but the economic crisis has been growing. There has hardly been a day without news of the credit crunch worsening, and a fall in employment, consumption, production and business confidence. Once again, a European government has misjudged the predictable impact of austerity. Having shown almost no growth for a decade, the Italian economy is lingering in a long and deep recession.
Like the other countries on the eurozone’s southern rim, Italy faces three options. The first is to stay in the euro and take on alone the burden of full adjustment. By this I mean both economic adjustment, in terms of unit labour costs and inflation; and fiscal adjustment. The second is to stay in the eurozone, contingent on shared adjustment between creditor and debtor nations. The third is to leave the euro. Successive Italian governments have tried a fourth option – stay in the euro, focus on short-term fiscal adjustment only and wait.
Since we know from economic history how such episodes end, option four will ultimately lead us back to options one, two or three. My favourite would have been the second: make euro membership conditional on symmetrical adjustment. But Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, did not stand up to Angela Merkel. He did not tell the German chancellor that his country’s continued engagement with the single currency would have to depend on a proper banking union with full resolution and deposit insurance capacity; a eurozone bond; and more expansionist economic policies by Berlin. In his interview with the Financial Times last week, Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, demanded symmetrical adjustment – again, rather late, since Germany is already planning an austerity budget for 2014. In view of all political decisions already taken, the option of symmetrical adjustment is slowly receding.
So where does this leave Italy ahead of next month’s elections? As prime minister, Mr Monti promised reform and ended up raising taxes. His government tried to introduce modest structural reforms but they were watered down to macroeconomic insignificance. Having started as a leader of a technical government, he has emerged as a tough, political operator. His narrative has been that he saved Italy from the brink, or rather from Silvio Berlusconi, his predecessor. A fall in bond yields has played into this narrative, but most Italians know they owe this to another Mario – Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.
On the left, Pier Luigi Bersani, general secretary of the Partito Democratico, has supported austerity but has recently been trying to distance himself from those policies. He has also been more hesitant on structural reforms. His main campaign themes are a wealth tax, the fight against tax evasion, money laundering and gay rights. He says he wants Italy to stay in the eurozone. There is a marginal chance he will be more successful in standing up to Ms Merkel because he is in a better position to team up with François Hollande, the French president and a fellow Socialist.
On the right, the alliance of Mr Berlusconi and the Northern League has been behind in the polls but is making advances. So far, the former prime minister has had a good campaign. He has delivered an anti-austerity message that has struck a chord with a disillusioned electorate. He also keeps criticising Germany for its reluctance to accept a eurozone bond and to allow the ECB to buy Italian bonds unconditionally.
You could interpret this as an option-two stance: insist on symmetrical adjustment or get out. We know Mr Berlusconi only too well, however. He was a prime minister for long enough to have shaped such a debate much earlier. To become credible, he must produce a clear strategy that maps out the choices in detail. All we have now are television soundbites.
Judging from the latest opinion polls, the most likely election result is gridlock, perhaps in the form of a Bersani-Monti coalition of the centre-left, possibly with a centre-right majority in the Italian senate, where different voting rules apply. This would leave everyone, more or less, in charge. Nobody would have the power to implement a policy. Everybody would have the right to veto one.
If that were the case, Italy would continue to muddle through, pretending it had opted to remain in the euro but without creating the conditions to make membership sustainable. In the meantime, I would expect an anti-euro political consensus to emerge that would probably either win an outright majority in subsequent elections or trigger a political crisis with ultimately the same effect.
As for Mr Monti, my best guess is that history will accord him a role similar to that played by Heinrich Brüning, Germany’s chancellor from 1930 to 1932. He, too, was part of a prevailing establishment consensus that there was no alternative to austerity.
Italy still has a few choices open. But it has to make them.
Monti is not the right man to lead Italy
By Wolfgang Münchau
Most Italians know they owe the fall in bond yields to Draghi
The financial crisis has faded in Italy but the economic crisis has been growing. There has hardly been a day without news of the credit crunch worsening, and a fall in employment, consumption, production and business confidence. Once again, a European government has misjudged the predictable impact of austerity. Having shown almost no growth for a decade, the Italian economy is lingering in a long and deep recession.
Like the other countries on the eurozone’s southern rim, Italy faces three options. The first is to stay in the euro and take on alone the burden of full adjustment. By this I mean both economic adjustment, in terms of unit labour costs and inflation; and fiscal adjustment. The second is to stay in the eurozone, contingent on shared adjustment between creditor and debtor nations. The third is to leave the euro. Successive Italian governments have tried a fourth option – stay in the euro, focus on short-term fiscal adjustment only and wait.
Since we know from economic history how such episodes end, option four will ultimately lead us back to options one, two or three. My favourite would have been the second: make euro membership conditional on symmetrical adjustment. But Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, did not stand up to Angela Merkel. He did not tell the German chancellor that his country’s continued engagement with the single currency would have to depend on a proper banking union with full resolution and deposit insurance capacity; a eurozone bond; and more expansionist economic policies by Berlin. In his interview with the Financial Times last week, Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, demanded symmetrical adjustment – again, rather late, since Germany is already planning an austerity budget for 2014. In view of all political decisions already taken, the option of symmetrical adjustment is slowly receding.
So where does this leave Italy ahead of next month’s elections? As prime minister, Mr Monti promised reform and ended up raising taxes. His government tried to introduce modest structural reforms but they were watered down to macroeconomic insignificance. Having started as a leader of a technical government, he has emerged as a tough, political operator. His narrative has been that he saved Italy from the brink, or rather from Silvio Berlusconi, his predecessor. A fall in bond yields has played into this narrative, but most Italians know they owe this to another Mario – Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.
On the left, Pier Luigi Bersani, general secretary of the Partito Democratico, has supported austerity but has recently been trying to distance himself from those policies. He has also been more hesitant on structural reforms. His main campaign themes are a wealth tax, the fight against tax evasion, money laundering and gay rights. He says he wants Italy to stay in the eurozone. There is a marginal chance he will be more successful in standing up to Ms Merkel because he is in a better position to team up with François Hollande, the French president and a fellow Socialist.
On the right, the alliance of Mr Berlusconi and the Northern League has been behind in the polls but is making advances. So far, the former prime minister has had a good campaign. He has delivered an anti-austerity message that has struck a chord with a disillusioned electorate. He also keeps criticising Germany for its reluctance to accept a eurozone bond and to allow the ECB to buy Italian bonds unconditionally.
You could interpret this as an option-two stance: insist on symmetrical adjustment or get out. We know Mr Berlusconi only too well, however. He was a prime minister for long enough to have shaped such a debate much earlier. To become credible, he must produce a clear strategy that maps out the choices in detail. All we have now are television soundbites.
Judging from the latest opinion polls, the most likely election result is gridlock, perhaps in the form of a Bersani-Monti coalition of the centre-left, possibly with a centre-right majority in the Italian senate, where different voting rules apply. This would leave everyone, more or less, in charge. Nobody would have the power to implement a policy. Everybody would have the right to veto one.
If that were the case, Italy would continue to muddle through, pretending it had opted to remain in the euro but without creating the conditions to make membership sustainable. In the meantime, I would expect an anti-euro political consensus to emerge that would probably either win an outright majority in subsequent elections or trigger a political crisis with ultimately the same effect.
As for Mr Monti, my best guess is that history will accord him a role similar to that played by Heinrich Brüning, Germany’s chancellor from 1930 to 1932. He, too, was part of a prevailing establishment consensus that there was no alternative to austerity.
Italy still has a few choices open. But it has to make them.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/882bb27a-6...#axzz2IYlpuIJ3
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